#401 比尔·盖茨的工作之道

我想先引用比尔·盖茨评价自己的一句话，然后分享我发现的一句拉里·埃里森评价比尔·盖茨的精彩语录。首先，这是比尔·盖茨的自我评价。他说：'我的关键优势在于狂热——日以继夜调动全部能力，只专注于如何编写优秀软件。我热爱这种狂热状态。'

I wanna start with a quote by Bill Gates on Bill Gates, and then I wanna tell you this excellent Larry Ellison quote on Bill Gates that I found. So first, this is Bill Gates on Bill Gates. He says a key advantage I had was being fanatical. That is taking all of my capabilities day and night and just focusing on how do you write good software. I loved being a fanatic.

最终我完全沉浸其中。我不相信周末，也不相信假期。对很多人来说，这里并非理想的工作场所。我们近乎疯狂且要求严苛。

Eventually, I reveled in it. I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations. For a lot of people, it wasn't an ideal place to work. We were pretty frantic and demanding.

接下来是拉里·埃里森对比尔·盖茨的评价。请记住，他们曾是激烈竞争对手。拉里说：'比尔是我见过最非凡的商业奇才。有人说他是他们见过最聪明的人。'

And then here's the quote from Larry Ellison on Bill Gates. Keep in mind, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates were very fierce competitors. This is what Larry Ellison said. Bill Gates is one of the most remarkable business people I've ever met. Some people say Bill is the most brilliant guy that they've ever met.

我们这个行业有很多真正杰出的科学家。恕我直言，世界上比比尔聪明的人很多。但具备他那种专注力和持久力的人凤毛麟角。有人曾说：'比尔想让人们以为他是爱迪生，实则他是洛克菲勒。'

There are a lot of really brilliant scientists in our business. Forgive me. There are a lot of people in the world smarter than Bill Gates. There are very few people in the world that have his focus and endurance. Someone once said Bill wants people to think that he is Thomas Edison when he is really Rockefeller.

若他真是爱迪生，反而没那么危险。他完全不知疲倦，绝对专注，且志在必得。巴里·迪勒评价他：'年轻、狠辣且精力充沛。'

If he was Edison, he would be less dangerous. He is utterly relentless. He is indefatigable. He is absolutely focused, and he wants it all. Barry Diller said he is young, and he's mean, and he's not tired.

能得到巴里·迪勒如此赞誉实属难得。比尔强悍且野心勃勃，我对此人怀有无比敬意。最近比尔刚出版自传《源代码》，记述了他从童年到创立微软及之后数年的经历。

That's a high compliment coming from Barry Diller. Bill is tough and he wants it all, and I have incredible respect for that man. So recently, Bill Gates just wrote an autobiography. It's called Source Code. It covers his early childhood and his life up until founding Microsoft and a few short years after that.

原本本期节目只打算分享我从《源代码》中获得的启示。但现在我决定制作一期'比尔·盖茨工作法则'专题，类似刚完成的埃隆专题。我整合了《源代码》和另外四本关于比尔的著作的笔记，剔除所有与公司建设无关的内容，接下来将逐本解析。

And so originally, this episode was just gonna be about what I learned by reading Source Code. So what I decided to do instead is I wanna make a how Bill Gates works episode, very similar to the how Elon works episode I just did. And so I grabbed all the notes and highlights from Source Code and four other books that I've read on Bill Gates. And then I stripped away everything that wasn't his approach to building his company. So I'm gonna go through book by book.

那么让我们从《源代码》开始说起。我从这本书中摘录的许多内容显示，比尔·盖茨的天才之处在于他设计了一家与自身特质天然契合的公司，这家公司充分受益于他的天赋与个性。书中提到，在我十几岁时，父母已接受我与同龄人的不同，并理解我需要一定独立性来探索世界。比尔·盖茨很早就发现，他喜欢成为——他之前怎么说的来着？——'我是个狂热分子'。

So let's start with Source Code. A lot of this that I pulled off from Source Code is you see one of the the things that the genius things that that Bill Gates did is he designed a company that was natural to him, that benefited from his innate talents and personality. So it says, by the time I was in my early teens, my parents had accepted that I was different from many of my peers and had come to terms with the fact that I needed a certain amount of independence in making my way through the world. From a very early age, Bill Gates discovered that he liked being what he's what did he say earlier? I was a fanatic.

他痴迷于这种狂热状态。当时他就读的湖滨中学拥有极其罕见的计算机资源——学校搭建了让学生通过电话线连接大型主机的系统。在那个年代，青少年能接触计算机是难以想象的。比尔发现后立即表示：'我们完全沉迷其中了'。

He liked being obsessed. Unfortunately, the school he went to, which is called Lakeside, had access, which is extremely rare at this point in history, to a computer. Lakeside had set up a way for students to connect with a big mainframe computer over a phone line. It was incredibly rare back then for teenagers to have access to a computer in any form. And so as soon as Bill discovers this, he says, we really took to it.

我们把所有空闲时间都投入编写程序，他找到了与天性完美契合的活动爱好。他说编程适合我，因为它让我自定义成功标准，且充满无限可能。编写复杂长程序所需的逻辑思维、专注力和持久力，对我而言是与生俱来的。我会沉浸在自己的思维中，在脑海里勾勒代码结构。

We devoted all of our free time to writing programs, and he found the perfect activity and hobby that aligned with his innate personality. He says programming fit me because it allowed me to define my own measures of success, and it seemed limitless. The logic, focus, and stamina needed to write long, complicated programs came naturally to me. I would retreat into my own thoughts. I would picture computer code in my mind.

年轻的比尔·盖茨将和历史上许多伟大企业家一样发现：限制条件反而是盟友。精简是关键。当时计算机内存极小，程序必须极度精简，用最少代码避免内存占用。就像那句名言：'我想写封简短的信，但没时间'。写冗长草率的程序容易，而用一页纸完成同样功能却需要真功夫。

One of the things that young Bill Gates is going to discover, like many of history's greatest entrepreneurs did before him, is that constraints are your friend. Small was key. Computers back then had very little memory, which meant programs had to be lean, written using as little code as possible so not to hog memory. Like the famous line, I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have time. It is easier to write a program in sloppy code that goes on for pages than to write the same program on a single page.

这呼应了我们前几周讨论詹姆斯·戴森时提到的理念：精简的工程才是好工程。埃隆·马斯克会赞同，比尔·盖茨也会。耐人寻味的是，你会发现比尔也用这种方式经营企业。

This goes back to an idea that has popped up the last few weeks with you and I when we talked about James Dyson, believe that lean engineering is good engineering. Elon Musk would say the same thing. Bill Gates would say the same thing. Lean engineering is good engineering. Now what is so fascinating about this is that you will see that Bill also ran his business this way.

他对浪费和低效有种本能的厌恶。这种特质体现在他对成本控制的执着上——他不断敦促公司全员关注这点。所有关于比尔·盖茨和微软的书籍都会反复提及。比如我最喜欢的故事之一：全食超市创始人约翰·麦基曾告诉我——在我们多次会面期间，他已听完100多期《创始人》播客——他说如果年轻时听过这个节目，全食至今仍会是独立公司。因为播客中历代伟大企业家都在强调控制开支的重要性，他会在景气时期更重视这点。

He has a visceral, like, disgusting reaction. He just hates waste and inefficiencies. And one of the ways this manifested was Bill was obsessed with cost control, and he is constantly hounding everyone in the company about it. This will come up many, many times in every book that you read about Bill Gates and Microsoft. Like, actually, one of my favorite stories about this is I get to spend a bunch of time with John Mackie, who's the founder of Whole Foods.

企业和人性都容易在顺境时放松成本管控。这正是我和Ramp联合创始人兼CEO埃里克讨论的话题——Ramp是《创始人》播客的主赞助商。约翰告诉我，这是关于本播客最惊人的评价：若年轻时听过这些内容，他会把控制开支置于更高优先级，尤其在繁荣时期。

And during one of our conversations, John told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about this podcast, because before by the time me and John met, he had listened to over a 100 episodes of Founders, and he told me that if Founders existed when he was younger, that Whole Foods would still be an independent company. That since the podcast and all of History's greatest entrepreneurs are constantly emphasizing the importance of controlling expenses, he would have put more of a priority on it, especially during good times, during boom times. It is very natural for a company and really for human nature to just not watch your costs as closely because everything is going so well. That is something I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the cofounder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of Founders.

早在Ramp成为Founders节目的主要赞助商之前，我就已经认识了Ramp的所有联合创始人，并与他们共度了许多时光。他们都听过这个播客，并捕捉到Founders节目的一个核心主题——关注成本与控制支出的重要性，以及这样做如何带来巨大的竞争优势。这是比尔·盖茨凭直觉理解并不断践行的事。等我们讲到这些部分时，我想这会让你大开眼界。

And way before they were the presenting sponsor of Founders, I had known all the cofounders of Ramp and had spent a bunch of time with them. They all had listened to the podcast, and they picked up on the fact that the main theme, one of the main themes of Founders, is the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage. This is something Bill Gates understood intuitively and implemented incessantly. Wait till we get to these parts. I think it's gonna blow your mind.

沃伦·巴菲特曾说，优秀的企业管理者应该像魔鬼般严控成本。比尔·盖茨正是如此，这也是Ramp的核心理念。Ramp存在的意义就是为你提供控制支出所需的一切工具。它提供全团队易用的企业信用卡、自动化费用报告和成本管控功能。

Warren Buffett said that a good manager of a business should be a demon on cost. Bill Gates was exactly that, and that is a main theme for Ramp. The reason that Ramp exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your costs. They give you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, and cost control.

Ramp帮助你像比尔·盖茨痴迷的那样运营高效组织，且所有功能都集成在单一平台上。访问ramp.com了解他们如何助力你的企业，让历史上最伟大的企业家们为之骄傲。网址是ramp.com。除了厌恶低效浪费和拥有超强专注力外，比尔·盖茨童年就显现且贯穿微软创立过程的另两大特质是：他既冷酷好胜又精力充沛。

Ramp helps you run an efficient organization, which Bill Gates was obsessed with doing. And Ramp does this all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business today. That is ramp.com. So in addition to having a distaste for inefficiency, a distaste for waste, having the ability to hyperfocus, two other traits of Bill Gates that are present in his early childhood that will never leave him and are bet are are very present as he's building Microsoft is the fact that he is ruthlessly competitive and full of energy.

他在《源代码》书中讲述童年故事：即便小时候和姐妹们玩各种棋盘游戏（如大富翁、风险棋、纸牌），他们也总要把一切变成竞技比赛。比如买两套相同拼图比赛谁先完成。他还提到自己另一个显著特质是过剩精力，并说：'我会不停摇晃身体'。

And so he would tell stories in the book, in source code, about the fact that even when he was a kid, he had, sisters, that they would play all kinds of board games. So monopoly, risk, card games. And he says they had to turn everything into a competitive sport, that they would buy two copies of the same puzzle, and then they'd race to see who would finish first. And then he says his other notable early trait was excess energy. And he says, I rocked.

这种摇晃习惯——你在任何采访中都能看到，Netflix关于比尔·盖茨的纪录片里他也总在摇晃。他说：'坐着晃，站着也晃。每当深入思考时，摇晃就像我大脑的节拍器，至今仍是如此。'

Rocking while you you'll see this in any interviews. There's also a great documentary on Bill Gates on Netflix where he's constantly rocking. So he says, I rocked. Rocking while seating. Rocking while standing.

理解比尔·盖茨的另一关键特质是：他极具斗争性。我们始终在探讨他创业所用的理念与个人特质。他第一个斗争对象是试图管束他的母亲——比尔·盖茨是无法被管理的。

Anytime I got to really thinking about something, rocking was like a metronome for my brain, and it still is. And then another trait that's really important to understand about Bill Gates because he again, all we're talking about is how what the ideas he used and the personal traits he used to build his business. He is incredibly combative. And the first main person that he was combative with was his mother because she tried to control him. Bill Gates is unmanageable.

最终他父母明白了这点。他说：'我父母知道我的思维节奏与其他孩子不同。我妹妹听话、合群、成绩好，而我一样都不占。'

And eventually, his parents figured this out. He says, my parents knew that the rhythm of my mind was different from the other kids. My sister did what she was told. She played easily with other kids and from the start got good grades. I did none of these things.

我曾是个好斗叛逆的孩子。他也会成为同类型的创始人。人们形容我多动、聪慧、叛逆且喜怒无常。我的老师和父母在我幼年时就预见了这一切。我将全部热情倾注于感兴趣的事物，对无趣之事则毫不理会。

I was an aggressive, rebellious child. He will be the same kind of founder. I was described as hyperkinetic, brainy, contrarian, and temptuous. My teachers and my parents noted at an early age of what was to come. I channeled intensity into anything that interested me and nothing that didn't.

比尔·盖茨活在二元状态中。这一点会反复显现——他要么全然冷漠，要么彻底痴迷。如同许多伟大企业家那样，他最初的痴迷对象是阅读。小学时，我已在家自主阅读大量书籍。

Bill Gates lives in binary states. This will pop up over and over again. He is either totally apathetic or completely obsessed. And one of his first obsessions, like many of his greatest entrepreneurs, was reading. By elementary school, I was reading a lot on my own at home.

我自学如何学习，享受快速吸收新知、以书自娱的感觉。相比之下学校进度缓慢。阅读是我的默认状态。沉浸书页时，时光飞逝，外界喧嚣与我无关。

I was learning how to learn by myself, and I like the feeling of being able to quickly absorb new facts and entertain myself with books. School felt slow in comparison. Reading was my default state. When I read, hours flew by. I tuned out the world.

我活在自己的思维世界里。书籍是父母从不吝啬的开支。家里最珍贵的财富是那套《世界图书百科全书》，我从A到Z通读了每一卷。我必须再次强调这点。

I was in my own head. Books were the one thing my parents never questioned spending money on. One of our greatest treasures was a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. I read through every volume a to z. Again, I have to point this out.

对此我能给出的极致形容是：他们吞噬整排书架。这种穷尽某个主题所有著作、读遍整个图书馆的特质，反复出现在那些成就伟业者的传记中——托马斯·爱迪生、温斯顿·丘吉尔、埃隆·马斯克、埃德温·兰德、比尔·盖茨，他们都吞噬整排书架。一旦对某主题产生兴趣，他们必须...我认为他们是被迫...

The maximum I have for this is they devour entire shelves. This idea of reading every single book on a subject, reading entire libraries reappears over and over again in these biographies of great people that did great things. Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Elon Musk, Edwin Land, Bill Gates, they devour entire shelves. If they are interested in a topic, they must. They can't even I I think they're compelled.

他们根本控制不住自己。必须读完能接触到的所有相关材料。我对自身智力逐渐建立信心，随之而来的是认知到成人与我的智力鸿沟已然消失。父亲后来形容这种转变发生得突然，他说我仿佛一夜长大，成为个爱争论、思维强势、有时不太讨喜的成年人。

They can't even help themselves. They must read every single thing they can they can get their hands on about I had growing confidence in my own power of my own intellect. With this confidence also came a feeling that the intellectual divide between adults and me had collapsed. My father would later say that this change happened abruptly. He said, I became an adult overnight, an argumentative, intellectually forceful, and sometimes not very nice adult.

那年我九岁。很多人向我索要十大书单，说'只要告诉我你读过的前十名，我就照单全读'。我不知这份清单该是什么样，但确定有本关于比尔·盖茨的书必须入选——那是我读过最爱的书籍之一。

I was nine. A lot of people ask me for a top 10 list. I was like, tell me just give me the top 10 of all the books that you read, and I'll just read the your top 10 list. I don't know what that list would look like. All I know is there's one book on Bill Gates that has to be on that list, one of my favorite books I've ever read.

这本书名为《硬盘：比尔·盖茨与微软帝国的崛起》，我已经读了两遍，并制作了两期相关节目。稍后我会为你梳理书中的精彩内容。我觉得这本书如此引人入胜的原因之一，是它聚焦于比尔·盖茨的专注力——他在《源代码》访谈中也亲自谈及这点。

It's called Hard Drive, Bill Gates and the Making of a Microsoft Empire. I've read it twice. I've done two episodes on it. And the reason that I'm and I'm gonna go through a bunch of highlights for you in a little bit on the book. And one of the the the reasons I find that book so interesting is because it focuses on Bill Gates' ability to focus, and he talks about this in Source Code.

他说：'我对投入精力的事情极其审慎。我认为这正是成就伟业者与空想者之间的本质区别。你必须精挑细选你的能量去向。我最自在的状态就是沉浸在自己的思维里，可以连续数日不言不语，只有吃饭和上学时才离开房间。'

He says, I was very deliberate about what I put energy into. I think that is a huge difference between people that accomplish great things and people that want to but never do. You have to be very deliberate about what you put your energy into. I felt most at home in my own head. I could go days without speaking, emerging from my room only for meals and school.

这最终演变成严重问题，以至于他们不得不请家庭心理医生。实际上医生的主要工作是调解比尔与母亲的关系。我提及这段往事是因为，在少年比尔的生命中，不断有成年人意识到：这个孩子非同寻常，他有着钢铁般的意志，常规管教对他根本无效。最终心理医生告诫其父母：'你们必须放松对他的控制。'

This got to be such a big problem. They had, like, a therapist, like, a family therapist, and it was really the therapist was there to try to moderate the relationship between Bill and his mother. And the reason I bring this up is because there's gonna be so many times throughout a young Bill Gates life where older adults realize this kid is special. He's got an iron will, and it's just not gonna work. Essentially, happens is the therapist tells his parents, you have to loosen your grip on him.

'在你们崩溃之前，他绝不会屈服。'后来书中记载（哦这是另一本书的内容，我改天在播客里细说），当比尔·盖茨已执掌微软二十余年时，他困惑地表示：'我不明白，这明明棒极了，为什么很少有人能数十年如一日地经营自己创立的公司？'这正印证了拉里·埃里森所观察到的，他那传奇般的耐力与专注力。而这一切都始于那次家庭治疗的结果。

You are going to break before he does. And later on in the book, when Bill Gates is already running Microsoft for alright. This is a different book. Later on the podcast, I'll you about this. You know, he's he talks about the fact that he's been running Microsoft at that time for, like, twenty something years.

我父亲后来转述了克雷西医生的原话：'放弃吧，他对我的父母说，你们赢不了的。放松管制，别再强求了。'

He's like, I don't understand. This fantastic. Why is it so rare for people to run a company they founded for multiple decades? Goes back to that legendary endurance and focus that Larry Ellison observed of him. And so this was the end result of family therapy.

'给你们儿子更多自由。'所有接触过少年比尔·盖茨的成年人都评价说：'比尔有着与生俱来的强大自信，自幼就对自己抱有极高期许。'我认为这才是最关键的特质——就像我反复推荐的迈克尔·戴尔自传中揭示的那样。

My father later shared what doctor Cressy said. Give it up, he told my parents. He's going to win. Ease up. Don't force it.

（注：此处保留口语化停顿特征）我觉得这点至关重要。我简直爱死了迈克尔·戴尔那本自传，虽然可能已经跟你提过无数次了。

Give your son more freedom. And so any adult that came in contact with the young Bill Gates has said, Bill had a lot of innate self confidence. He had a high opinion of himself from a young age. That I think this is one of the most important things. I absolutely loved Michael Dell's autobiography that I've told you about a million times.

你知道吗，我在制作那本书的节目之前，已经听了三遍有声书。迈克尔·戴尔在书中分享的一个我最喜欢的观点是，他打算用宿舍里攒下的1000美元挑战世界上最大的公司。他说，19岁的我是不是有点自以为是？当然是的。但我觉得要做成大事，就得有这样的气魄。

You know, I've listened to the audiobook three times before I made the episode on that book. And one of my favorite things that Michael Dell shared in the book was, you know, the idea that I'm gonna try to take on the world's biggest company with a thousand dollars from my dorm room. And he says, was I a little full of myself at 19? Sure I was. I think you have to be to do anything important.

这与书中的另一段描述非常相似。比尔从小就有着与生俱来的自信，年纪轻轻就对自己评价很高。他从小做的最聪明的一件事，就是开始大量阅读。他说自己啃下了成堆的传记，书中列举了一些名字，比如富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福、道格拉斯·麦克阿瑟、拿破仑、亨利·福特等等。

Very similar to the line in this book. Bill had a lot of innate self confidence. He had a high opinion of himself from a young age. And one of the smartest things that Bill did from a young age is he started consuming a ton. Just he he said he consumed stacks of biographies, and he named some in the book, like Franklin Del Delano Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur, Napoleon, Henry Ford, etcetera.

他说，他和朋友一起做这件事时，会花数小时在电话里剖析这些人的人生。他们以极强的专注力分析这些成功者走过的道路。再次强调，他做任何事都全力以赴。

He said we spent him and his friend were doing this together. He said we spent hours on the phone dissecting their lives. We analyze the past they followed to success with intensity. Again, he can't do anything. If he's doing anything, he's doing it with intensity.

这追溯到他对于计算机的热爱，以及选择了一个对他而言自然而然的行业，一个他可以从事数十年的领域。我特别喜欢他描述计算机如何迫使他思考：'它完全不容忍思维上的马虎'——这点再次让他感到困扰，'它要求我必须保持逻辑一致性并注重细节。一个放错位置的逗号或分号，整个程序就无法运行。'

Goes back to his love of computers and really picking a business that would come naturally to him, one he could do for many, many decades. I loved how the computer forced me to think. It was completely unforgiving in the face of mental sloppiness, again, which really disturbs him. It demanded that I be logically consistent and pay attention to details. One misplaced comma or semicolon, and the thing wouldn't work.

这种反馈机制令人上瘾。故事发展到这时他才13岁。'越来越精进的感觉让人兴奋。编写程序需要的技能组合恰好是我的强项——逻辑思维是其一，长时间高度专注的能力是其二。'

This feedback loop was addictive. He's like 13 at this point in the story. The feeling of getting better and better was a rush. Writing programs flowed in from a combination of skills that came easy to me. Logical thinking being one and an ability to focus intensely for long periods being another.

编程还激发了我内心持续存在的证明自己的渴望。作为八年级学生，我对自己的脑力充满信心，坚信凭借这种专注力，我能做到那些年长者能做到的事，甚至做得更好。这段话的结尾充分体现了他极度的好胜心：'我下定决心不让任何人占我上风。'就在这时，他将遇见未来的...

Programming also stoked the persistent need I had to prove myself. I was an eighth grader confident in my brainpower and convinced that my intensity meant that I could do anything the older guys could do if not better. The way he ends this paragraph speaks back to his hyper competitiveness. I was determined to not let anyone get anything on me. And so this is when he's gonna meet his future.

他在湖滨中学遇见了未来的联合创始人保罗·艾伦。保罗比他大两岁。比尔·盖茨在几本书中都提到过：'我被那些没有现成路径的领域所吸引，那里就像没有前人踏出的轨迹。'

He meets his future cofounder Paul Allen at Lakeside. Paul Allen's two years older than him. And there's something that Bill Gates says in a few different books. He was attracted to a a field where there's, like, no path. There's, like, no track in front of you.

你得靠自己摸索出答案。后来当被问及建议时，他常这样说道：如果你要重新开始，作为一个年轻人，今天你会做什么？显然现在你不会再创办微软了。他说你应该寻找未开发的领域来发现机会。这正是我们在故事中看到的情形，因为他说当时没有任何指导。

You kinda have to figure this out for yourself. And one way he would talk about this later when he was, asked to give advice, you know, if you were starting over, if you're a young person, what would you do today? You obviously wouldn't start Microsoft today. And he said you should look for virgin territory to identify opportunity. And that is exactly what we find where we're on the story, because he says there's no instruction.

我们比老师懂得更多，被迫自己摸索如何编写第一个程序。后来他会提到，我们没法看YouTube编程教程，因为那时还没有互联网。随着时间推移，许多最初摆弄终端电脑的孩子失去了兴趣逐渐离开，只剩下少数铁杆爱好者——这是比尔·盖茨最钟爱的词：铁杆(hardcore)。

We knew more than our teachers, and we were forced to try to piece together how to write our first programs on our own. Later on, he'll talk about, you know, we couldn't watch YouTube tutorials on how to code because there's no Internet. There was no Internet. So he says as the weeks been went by, a lot of the kids who first played around with the terminal with the computer lost interest and drifted away, leaving a small group of hardcore adherents. That is Bill Gates' favorite word by far, hardcore.

这才是关键。所有人都是如此。这是人性——他们会对所有事情放弃。记得拉里·埃里森怎么评价比尔·盖茨的吗？

And this is the key. Everyone. It is human nature. They give up on everything. Remember what Larry Ellison said about Bill Gates.

世界上极少有人具备他那样的专注力和持久力。我认为他14岁就沉迷于此，这种痴迷实际上奠定了他毕生的工作方式。《硬盘战争》书中有句精彩的话：比尔做任何事都追求极致。源代码里就有例证——他整天泡在电脑前，晚上还能进入名为C立方(C cubed)的计算机实验室。但晚上10点回家后...

There are very few people in the world that have his focus and endurance. And I think he is 14 years old when he gives into this obsession, and it actually gives him the way that he's going to work for the rest of his life. There's a great line in that book hard drive I just told you about where it says everything Bill did, he did to the max. And so there's an example of that in source code because he's working all day at the computer, and they have access to this computer lab at night called c cubed. But then he'd be home at, like, 10:00 at night.

他会想：为什么要睡觉？我应该继续研究电脑。于是他偷偷溜出卧室，爬窗户搭公交车返回C立方，通宵编程。他说这是无数次夜逃的开始，此后多年皆是如此。

And he's like, why am I gonna go to sleep? Like, I should just be working on the computer. So he would sneak out of his room at home, climb out his bedroom window, and go and catch the bus. Go into C Cube and work all night on the computer. He says that would be the first of many nights I'd sneaked out and for years after.

这个行为至关重要，这是全书我最喜欢的段落之一。他说：我遇到的许多成功人士都描述过，在爱上所选领域后，必须经历一段艰苦专注的时期。正是这段将原始兴趣转化为真正技能的时光最为关键。这短短四个月塑造了我延续数十年的工作模式。

And this is really important that he did this. This is one of my favorite lines in the entire book. He says a lot of successful people I've met have described how after falling in love with their chosen field, they had to put in a period of hard, focused work. It's the time in which raw interest is transformed into real skill that is so important. This period, which was really just about four months, minted a work style for me that would last for decades.

不受成本或时间限制，我会进入完全专注的状态。每完成一段程序就立即运行测试，即刻得到对错反馈。尝试某个方案，检验是否可行；若失败，就换种方法再试。

Unconstrained by cost or time, I'd fall into a zone of total focus. As fast as I completed a section of a program, I could ask the computer to run it, giving me an instant answer whether I was right or wrong. Try something. See if it works. If it doesn't, try again with something different.

我们无法在互联网上观看YouTube教程。那时没有网络，指导手册也很稀少。他和保罗·艾伦对知识如饥似渴，甚至会翻找垃圾堆。所以关键在于你如何看待这件事——你究竟有多渴望成功？

We couldn't watch YouTube tutorials on the Internet. There was no Internet, and guidebooks were rare. Him and Paul Allen are so hungry for knowledge. They would dive in dumpsters. So this is like the way you think about this, how bad do you actually want it?

你究竟有多渴望？因为世界上有像比尔·盖茨或迈克尔·戴尔这样的人，他们极度渴望成功，并愿意不惜一切代价获取所需信息来实现目标。每天下班后，会有人清理垃圾。那些垃圾里夹杂着印有代码的废纸，记录着C立方工程师当天的工作内容。当所有员工回家后，我和保罗就会溜到大楼后面，在垃圾堆里寻找宝藏。

How bad do you actually want it? Because there's somebody out there like a Bill Gates or like a Michael Dell that wants it deeply and are willing to do whatever is necessary to get the information they need that would help them accomplish their goals. At the end of every day, someone would take out the trash. Included in that trash would be used computer paper, printed with lines of code, whatever the C cubed engineers are working on that day. At night, when the employees had all gone had all gone home, Paul and I went out went out to the back of the building to see what we could find in the dumpster.

那时我13岁，以一台价值50万美元的机器为师自学编程。当他说自己锻造了独特的工作方式时，指的就是这个。记不清多少次我在终端前睡着，鼻子贴在键盘上一两个小时，醒来后又立刻投入编程。这就是我的高中时代。

I was 13 years old, learning on my own terms with a $500,000 machine as my teacher. And when he says he minted a working style, this is what he means. I'd fall asleep at the terminal more times than I can remember. My nose meeting the keys for an hour or two, then I'd wake up and immediately start coding again. So that is high school.

这就是哈佛岁月。这就是微软初创期。每个接触过比尔的人都见证过这种状态。我的工作方式是高强度直面问题。比尔在创业期间酷爱思想碰撞。

That is Harvard. That is Microsoft. Everyone who runs into Bill reports seeing him do this. My approach was rapid fire in your face. Bill loved conflict when building his company.

他与历史上许多企业家还有另一个共同点——我能给你列举50条相关名言，但杰夫·贝索斯的这句话最为贴切，他也是这类人：'如果必须在和谐与冲突间选择，我每次都选冲突。'为什么？因为冲突总能产生更好的结果。说回比尔·盖茨。

Another thing that he'll have in common with a lot of history based entrepreneurs, I could read, know, 50 quotes to you about this, but I think the best quote that describes this is from Jeff Bezos who also was like this. If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. Why? Conflict always yields a better result. Back to Bill Gates.

那时的我像个疯子般彻夜工作，创下了连续工作近100小时不休息的纪录。这意味着近四天不洗澡、几乎不进食。当你思考为何这些创始人都追求冲突时——因为他们渴望胜利。

I was a kid working like a maniac late into every night. I broke my record for sustained work. Once not leaving for nearly a hundred hours straight. That meant not showering and hardly eating for nearly four days. And so when you think about why all these founders want conflict, they want conflict because they wanna win.

他们追求进步，极度渴望成为最强者。史蒂夫·乔布斯曾论述冲突的益处，杰夫·贝索斯也谈论过，比尔·盖茨同样如此。

They want improvement. They desperately need to be the best. So I'm thinking Steve Jobs would talk about the benefit of conflict. Jeff Bezos talked about the benefit of conflict. Bill Gates talks about it.

在一个案例中，比尔偶然遇到一位经验丰富得多的资深程序员。你会看到他的反应。有人像学校老师批改作业那样彻底剖析了我的作品。那人不仅修正问题，还重构了我写的整个结构和设计。

And so in in one case, Bill runs into he quickly starts becoming the best programmer out of his, like, group of friends, but then he runs into an older programmer with a lot more experience. And you'll see his reaction to this. Someone had gone through and, like, a school teacher corrected my work. The person had completely torn it apart. He wasn't just fixing issues, but the whole structure and design of what I had written.

通常我的第一反应会是自我辩护。如果在湖畔中学有人批评我的代码，我可能会发火：'不可能！你错了！'但这次，当我坐着阅读他的批注、研究代码时，我心想：'天啊...'

Normally, my first reaction would have been to defend myself. If anyone at Lakeside tried to critique my code, I might snap. No way. You're wrong. But this time, as I sat reading his comments, studying the code, I thought to myself, oh, wow.

这人说得太对了。我从未见过对编程如此敏锐犀利的人。他每次返还的修改意见都将我的作品提升到我未曾想象的高度。这句话至关重要——他的修改让我的作品达到了我认知之外的水平。

This guy is so right. I had never met anyone as vigilant and sharp about computer coding. He consistently returned my work with corrections that raised it to levels that I didn't know existed. That is such an important line. He consistently returned my work with corrections that raised it to levels I didn't know existed.

诺顿为我打开了全新境界。他希望你能反驳，渴望证明自己正确。我提过无数次的盛田昭夫——索尼创始人——我们崇拜的许多人如贝索斯、乔布斯或詹姆斯·戴森都研究过他。他在自传《日本制造》中最有趣的观点是：企业应该雇佣专职批评家。

Norton opened a completely new level to me. And so this idea that he wants you to push back, he wants to be right. Akio Morita, who I've told you about a million times, he's the founder of Sony. It's remarkable how many of these people that that we admire, like Abbezos or Jobs or James Dyson, studied Akio Morita and and Sony. And one of the most interesting ideas that Akio Morita wrote about in his autobiography, is a book called Made in Japan, was the fact that he believed more companies should hire a paid critic.

当时索尼生产音响设备，盛田发现一位拥有超凡听觉的大学生，这人热爱索尼并希望产品尽善尽美。盛田聘用他说：'我们会推出新品，而你要彻底批判它，指出改进方向。'

And so when Akio discovered this, at the time Sony was making audio equipment. And so he found somebody that had a very advanced ear, somebody that loved Sony and wanted their products to be as good as possible. And at the time, he was just a a college student. And so Akio gives him a job, and his job is, hey. We're gonna put this new product out, and you're gonna rip it to shreds and tell us what and how it can be better.

这位从大学生起步的专职批评家最终成为索尼总裁。盛田的理念与比尔·盖茨的发现不谋而合：应该聘用能让你进步的人和工具。我的合伙人开发的Vanta就是这样的销售利器，其价值主张非常清晰——

That paid critic that starts out as a college student eventually becomes the president of Sony. What Akio would tell you and what Bill Gates is discovering that you should hire people and you should use tools that make you better. One of my partners makes such a tool. Vanta is a very powerful tool to get more sales. Vanta's value prop is very clear.

Vanta帮助企业证明自身安全性以获得更多客户。许多公司要求认证才会签约，否则你将错失商机。因此Vanta客户平均获得526%的投资回报率。它如同智能安全助手，助你轻松通过审计——既增收又省时。

Vanta helps your company prove that you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. Many companies won't sign contracts unless you're certified, and this is causing you to lose out on sales. That is why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment after becoming a Vanta customer. You can think of Vanta like an intelligent security assistant that helps your company pass audits without tons of manual work. So not only do you make more money with Vanta, but you also save more time.

人工合规既缓慢又痛苦，手动处理一切事务需要数月时间。优秀的企业不会容忍用人力去做本可由技术自动化完成的工作，浪费宝贵的公司时间。这是一个古老而强大的理念，在你我反复阅读的这些传记中屡见不鲜。Vanta将助您更快更省力地赢得信任、达成交易并保持安全。访问vanta.com/founders，即可享受一千美元优惠。

Manual compliance is slow and painful, and doing everything by hand takes months. The best companies will not tolerate wasting valuable company time doing something with labor when technology can automate it. That is a very old and powerful idea that you and I see over and over and over again in these biographies. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals, and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com/founders, and you'll get a thousand dollars off.

网址是vanta.com/founders。当比尔·盖茨进入哈佛后，他回归了完全相同的工作模式。'我让自己进入适合的日常节奏，即便在朋友眼中显得极端。在学习和编程之间，我能连续工作三十六小时。每当精疲力竭时，我会和衣而睡十二小时以上，连鞋子都来不及脱。'

That is vanta.com/founders. And so when Bill Gates goes to Harvard, he goes back to the exact same working style. I do myself into a daily rhythm that worked for me even if it seemed extreme to my friends. Between studying and programming, I could be away for thirty six hours at a stretch. Whenever exhaustion took over, I would crash for twelve or more hours, fully clothed with my shoes still on.

这个作息我持续了数月。于是他和保罗开始讨论创业方向。比尔·盖茨对硬件制造始终提不起兴趣，他说：'我对硬件建设的热情正在消退。在我看来，计算机生产业务风险过高。'

I repeated this routine for months. And so he him and Paul are talking about what kind of business they wanna start. And the idea of making hardware never appealed to Bill Gates. He says I was increasingly cooling on the idea of building hardware. The business of manufacturing computers seemed too risky to me.

我们需要采购零件、雇佣组装人员，还得寻找大片场地。软件则截然不同——无需线材、无需厂房，编写软件纯粹是脑力与时间的投入。

We'd have to buy parts, hire people to assemble the machines, and find lots of space to pull it off. Software was different. No wires. No factories. Writing software was just brainpower and time.

这又回溯到他的童年偏好。他热衷什么？独处一室全神贯注工作三十六小时。'这正是我们擅长之事，也是我们的独特之处。'

Again, goes back to his early childhood. What does he like to do? He likes to be in a room by himself super focused for thirty six straight hours. And that is what we knew how to do. What made us unique?

这是我们的优势所在，'我甚至相信我们能引领潮流。'这个理念促使他选择能成为绝对顶尖的领域。初入哈佛时他想攻读数学，但很快发现：'哦，这里有太多数学比我强的人。'

It was where we had an advantage. I believe we could even lead the way. That idea, he wants to pick a field where he can be the absolute best. When he went to Harvard, he thought, oh, maybe I'll study math. And then he gets to Harvard, he realizes, oh, there's a lot of people that are better than me at math.

所以我需要另寻方向。软件公司的创业契机源于保罗·艾伦冲进比尔·盖茨的哈佛宿舍，手里拿着1975年1月的《大众电子》杂志。'三年来，保罗和我一直在讨论利用芯片指数级进步的新计算机将如何改变一切。'杂志封面正是Altair——这台个人电脑由新墨西哥州阿尔伯克基的MITS公司制造。

So I need to find a different field to go into. And so the opportunity to start a software company actually comes because Paul Allen runs into Bill Gates dorm room at Harvard. And in his hand, he's holding the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. And it says for three years, Paul and I had been talking about how new computers that exploited the exponential improvement of chips could change everything. On the cover of that magazine was the Altair, which is a personal computer made by this company out in Albuquerque, New Mexico called called MITS, m I t s.

于是保罗和比尔决定直接打电话给MITS的总裁埃德·罗伯茨，因为罗伯茨需要有人为他的硬件编写软件。比尔说，我告诉他我们即将完成一个BASIC语言版本的开发，这将成为Altair的第一款产品，我们想展示给他们看。罗伯茨告诉我，他已经接到过其他人声称拥有相同软件的电话。他说第一个能拿出可用版本的人就能获得合作机会。这里有两个关键点。

So Paul and Bill decided to cold call Ed Roberts, who's the president of MITS, because Ed Roberts needs somebody to write software for his hardware. And so Bill says, I explained that we were almost finished writing a version of basic, which is they're gonna be their first product for the Altair, and we'd like to show it to them. Roberts told me that he'd already gotten calls from people claiming to have the same software. He said the first person who could produce a working version would get the deal. Two important parts of this.

第一，比尔·盖茨承认他们当时根本没有现成软件，他说我们全程都在虚张声势。第二，我一直强调比尔的工作方式——他会全神贯注于任务直到完成，愿意工作到精疲力竭、穿着衣服脸砸在键盘上睡着，然后跳起来继续工作。这个习惯在多年后变得至关重要，因为他们正是要用这种方式来编写BASIC版本。他们必须成为第一个做到的团队。

One, Bill Gates said, they didn't have any software written. He says we were all faking our way along. And two, the reason I've been hounding on this guy the way that Bill works, that he just focuses on the task until it's done, that he's willing to work to the edge of exhaustion and collapse in his clothes with his face in the keyboard, and then jump back up and go right back to work. This was important many, many years after he developed that habit because they that's exactly what he's gonna do to write the their version of basic. They are going to get there first.

保罗·艾伦实际上要搬到阿尔伯克基，开始在MITS工作。比尔则往返于哈佛大学，但最重要的是：他们正在编写的程序就是这股浪潮。这正是他最终选择辍学的原因——他意识到如果现在不抓住机会，这场技术革命就会将他们远远抛在后面。他说计算资源过去始终是稀缺的受保护资源。

And so Paul Allen's actually gonna move to Albuquerque, start working at MITTS. Bill's gonna go back and forth to Harvard, but this is the most important thing. This is the wave that they are writing. This is why he eventually is going to drop out because he realized that there is a technological phenomenon that is going to leave them in the dust if they don't take advantage of it right now. He says computing had always been a scarce protected resource.

尽管当时没人能完全理解，但这种稀缺性即将被充裕取代，计算机很快将普及到数百万人手中。种种迹象表明他们押对了方向。有个标志能说明你抓住了机遇：真正的铁杆粉丝驱车数百甚至数千英里来阿尔伯克基领取他们的Altair。早晨上班时，经常能看到房车停在街角等着取电脑，就像在等外卖披萨。

Though no one could fully grasp it at that time, that scarcity was about to give way to plenty, and computers would very quickly be available to millions of people. And there are all these hints that they're onto something. Here's a hint that you're onto something. The real diehard fans drove hundreds and even thousands of miles to Albuquerque to pick up their Altair. Coming to work in the morning, it wasn't unusual to find RVs camped out on the corner waiting for their altair like it was takeout pizza.

那个位于商业街的办公室，周围是支票兑现点、自助洗衣店和按摩院，却成为了后来被称为个人计算机革命的发源地。埃德·罗伯茨的想法没错，但他严重低估了其受欢迎程度。他预测每年可能找到800位愿意掏钱买电脑的顾客。结果头几个月就卖出了数千台。我必须再次强调这一点，因为它反复出现。

That office in a strip mall surrounded by a check cashing place, a laundromat, and a massage parlor was ground zero for what would come to be called the personal computer revolution. Ed Roberts had the right idea, but he vastly underestimated its popularity. He had forecast that they might find 800 customers a year willing to shell out the money for their own computer. Instead, in the first few months, they sold thousands. Again, I have to repeat this because it just pops up over and over again.

让我抓狂的是，愿意研究历史并从人性中学习的人太少了。对于创新产品，市场往往比你预测的要大得多。不知为何，人类总是难以理解这个事实。对于创新产品，市场往往超出你的预期。这个现象一再重演。

It drives me insane that so few people are willing to study history and learn from human nature. For an innovative product, markets are often larger than you can predict. For some reason, our species has a hard time grasping that fact. For a innovative product, markets are often larger than you can predict. You see it over and over again.

上周我在戴森那期节目里就谈到过。他做吸尘器时是这样，盛田昭夫做索尼随身听时是这样，史蒂夫·乔布斯做iPhone时也是这样。对于创新产品，市场往往比你想象的更广阔。

I talked about it last week on the Dyson episode. He did it with the vacuum cleaners. Akio Morita did it with the Sony Walkman. Steve Jobs did it with the iPhone. For an innovative product, markets are often larger than you can predict.

还有一件让我震惊的疯狂事。我坐在这里思考这个。再次声明，我之前告诉过你。比如，我不喜欢人们快速浏览书籍、播客或其他任何内容。有时可能只是一句话或一个段落，我就只是盯着它看。

Here's another crazy thing that just blows my mind. I sit here and think about this. Again, I told you this before. Like, I I don't like when people speed through books or podcasts or anything else. Sometimes it could be a sentence or a paragraph, and I you just I just stare at it.

你反复阅读它，然后停下来。不去想其他任何事，只是思考这段话到底在说什么，它有多么重要。我正要给你读一段。这太奇怪了，比尔——这又回到我之前提到的自我和高度自信，迈克尔·戴尔说过，比尔·盖茨身边的人也都报告说在他早期就看到了这一点。这里面有深意。

And you read it over and over again, and you just stop. You don't go anywhere else, and you just think about what the hell is going on, how important this one paragraph can be. And I'm I'm about to read you one. It is so odd that Bill it goes back to, you know, the ego and having a lot of confidence that I mentioned that Michael Dell said and that Bill Gates, you know, everybody around him reported seeing him when he was earlier. There's something to this.

比尔竟然认为可以创办一家纯粹的软件公司。这些是当时的条件。这是比尔产生这个非同寻常想法时的文化背景。当时普遍认为软件应该是免费的。软件是可以从朋友那里复制、公开分享甚至偷窃的东西。

The idea that Bill even thought that you could start a pure software company. These are the conditions. This is the culture at the time in which Bill had this very unusual idea. It was generally accepted that software should be free. Software was something to be copied from a friend, openly shared, or even stolen.

软件向来是免费的。凭什么要收费？但保罗和我想建立一家企业。经过多次深夜长谈，我们确信：随着个人电脑越来越便宜并进入企业和家庭，对高质量软件的需求将几乎无限增长。这就是那段落的结尾。

It had always be been free. Why shouldn't you give it away? But Paul and I wanted to build a business. Our conviction arrived at over many late night talks was that as personal computers got cheaper and cheaper and spread into businesses and homes, there would be a nearly unlimited corresponding demand for high quality software. That is the end of the paragraph.

现在全球每年销售的软件有多少？你知道这有多疯狂吗？那段话太疯狂了。根本不存在纯粹的软件公司。你的客户甚至不相信你的产品应该收费。

How much software in the world on an annual basis is sold now? Do you know how fucking crazy this is? That paragraph is crazy. There is no such thing as a pure software company. Your customers don't even believe that your product should be paid for.

几乎没人拥有个人电脑，但比尔·盖茨有信念。他有坚定的信心。这就是为什么匆忙略过事物是危险的。在念给你听之前，我可能重读了那段话15次。这是整个故事中最难以理解的疯狂之处之一。

Almost nobody has a personal computer, but Bill Gates has belief. He has conviction. That is why it's dangerous to rush through things and to skip over things. I reread that paragraph probably 15 times before I just read it to you. It is one of the craziest things to understand in this story.

然后我告诉过你，我读过——大概五本关于比尔·盖茨的书。从没听他这样描述过。我们想建立一个软件工厂。我们将提供业内公认最优秀的一系列产品。如果一切顺利，我认为或许我们能拥有一支由优秀程序员组成的大型团队。

And then I told you, I've read, I don't five other books on Bill Gates. I've never heard him describe it this way. We wanted to make a software factory. We would provide a broad range of products that would be regarded as the best in the business. And if things went really well, I thought that maybe we could have a big team of skilled programmers working for us.

微软最初的目标是成为一家软件工厂。从一开始，我们就计划推出大量产品。我们想让自己的软件运行在全球每台个人电脑上。当时软件公司根本不存在。现在回想起来，这简直疯狂。

Microsoft was going to be a software factory. We're going to have many, many products from the jump. We wanted to get our software on every personal computer in the world. Software companies didn't exist. Again, this is insane.

我们的产品在客户眼中本该是免费的，但我们拥有第一个客户，并坚信能以此为基础发展。这个客户是新墨西哥州阿尔伯克基一家小型公司，位于购物中心里，周围是支票兑现点和按摩店。这就是史上最成功企业之一的卑微起点。当时他还是个缺乏经验的年轻创业者，签了份糟糕的协议。虽然后来他设法补救，但与MITS签署的协议规定：任何想在产品中使用8080 BASIC的公司都必须通过MITS而非微软获取源代码——他将其称为BASIC的'配方'。

Our product was something customers thought should be free, but we had one customer and faith that we could build from there. That one customer is this tiny little company in Albuquerque, New Mexico in a strip mall surrounded by check a check cashing place and a massage parlor. That is the humble beginnings of what will be one of the most successful companies ever created. Now he's a young, inexperienced entrepreneur, and he makes a bad deal. He winds up saving his ass later on, but the deal that they signed with MITTS gave them the exclusive rights to sublicense our software to any other company that wanted to use the eighty eighty basic in their products would have to get the source code, which he describes as the recipe to basic, through MITS and not Microsoft.

这是个糟糕的交易。他们最终因此卷入诉讼，差点让襁褓中的微软夭折。现在我想回到比尔·盖茨反复强调的主题——他想成为硬核人物。他渴望成为强硬派。

This is a bad deal. They're gonna wind up in a lawsuit over it. It almost kills Microsoft in the cradle too. Now I wanna go back to this reoccurring theme that Bill Gates wanted to be hardcore. He he wants to be a hardcore person.

这就是他的行事风格。在所有微软员工中——包括联合创始人和普通员工——他是最忧心忡忡的那个。'我总是担心我们行动不够快、工作不够努力。'在将软件理念转化为可行商业的创业过程中，他把数字设备公司创始人肯·奥尔森视为榜样。

This is the way he he's going to work. He talks about himself out of everybody, out of his cofounders, out of all the people working at Microsoft. He was also the one that was so concerned and scared. I was always worried that we weren't moving fast enough or working hard enough. As I started this journey into turning our ideas about software into a viable business, I found a role model in Digital Equipment Corporation's founder, Ken Olson.

他在实践中学习，最终成为商业大师。他认为自己也能像奥尔森那样掌握所需技能。所以他既推崇肯·奥尔森，又推崇埃德·罗伯茨。这些人都被神化了，而他心想：'我们能学到很多，因为这家公司管理实在太混乱了。'

He learned as he went and over time became a master of his business. I reasoned that he, and by extension, I could pick up whatever skills and knowledge were needed. So he holds up Ken Olsen as a as a role model. He's holding up Ed Roberts. They're they're embedded inside of myths, and he's like, oh, this is we're learning a ton because this is a really poorly run company.

MITS身处蓬勃发展的新兴产业中心，却充斥着混乱的决策、不成熟的战略、反复变更的计划，最终导致客户不满。连高管们都公开指责老板埃德·罗伯茨。他们直言不讳地解释为何无人敢提意见——虽未明说，但暗示很明显：埃德·罗伯茨不是比尔·盖茨。

Mitts was at the center of a booming new industry, and yet it was a frenzy of confusing initiatives, half baked strategies, constantly shifting plans, and ultimately sometimes angry customers. Even some of the most senior people laid the blame on their boss, Ed Roberts. And they were frank about why everyone was scared to raise their concerns. It's implied, but not explicitly stated. Ed Roberts is no Bill Gates.

问题在于他建立的企业文化与伟大创始人的期望背道而驰。他们希望你据理力争，对谄媚者毫无敬意。但所有人都惧怕埃德·罗伯茨。那么结果会怎样？

And the problem is he built a company culture, which is the opposite of what most great founders want. They want you to fight back. They will not respect you if you are a sycophant. Everybody was scared of Ed Roberts. So therefore, what happens?

没人告诉你真相。除了比尔·盖茨。艾德觉得比尔·盖茨令人困惑，因为其他人都在拍他马屁，而这个年轻人却当面冲他大吼大叫。他似乎对我整个人的气质、能量和强度感到困惑，还有我那种必须立刻解决问题的性格。我总是充满激情，时刻保持高强度状态。

No one tells you the truth. Everyone except Bill Gates. Ed found Bill Gates very confusing because everybody else is kissing his ass, and you have this young kid that's, like, getting in his face and yelling at him. He appeared bemused by my whole affect, the energy, and the intensity, my need to hash it out now personality. I had excited, always on intensity.

他说自己从第一天起就全力以赴。只要不睡觉，我就在编程或写信招揽生意，脑子里只想着下一步：招人、谈交易、找新客户。我之前提到过，比尔会追踪每一分钱，如果联合创始人和早期员工没做到这点，他就会严厉批评他们。

And he says, was hardcore from day one. Anytime I wasn't sleeping, I was coding, or writing a letter to drum up business, my mind was locked on the next step. People to hire, deals to cut, and new customers to find. And then I already mentioned this earlier. Bill tracked every penny, and he goes and rips his cofounders and the early employees when they fail to do the same.

于是他用七页纸写下商业计划。他说，我的指导原则是不要好高骛远导致成本失控。这是开篇第一句。我写的两大目标是：第一，扩大规模和声誉；第二，赚钱。这封信标志着我们开始有意识地努力成为一家独立公司。

So he writes his business plan on seven pages. He says, my guiding principle is not getting ahead of ourselves and drowning in costs. That's the first sentence. Our two main goals I wrote were, number one, grow in size and reputation, and two, make money. That letter marked the next phase of a concerted effort to establish ourselves as an independent company.

他说的独立公司是什么意思？他们只有一个客户，而且合作非常紧密。那家公司运营得很糟糕。我们必须尽快摆脱对这个客户的依赖。

What does he mean by independent company? He has one customer. They're working very close with them. He and it's a a crappy run and it's a crappy run company. We've got to diversify away from this guy as soon as we can.

比尔做的另一件聪明事。我们仍依赖Mitts让我很担忧，双方开始爆发冲突，因为Mitts持有8080基础版的全球版权。每次我们找到源代码客户，合同都必须经过Mitts。如果我们签了协议，就得和他们分成。比尔准备反击了。

Another smart thing Bill did. It worried me that we were still so reliant on Mitts, and they start having these fights since Mitts held worldwide rights to eighty eighty basic. Anytime we found a customer for the source code, the contract would have to go through Mitts. If we signed a deal, then we had to split the revenues with them. Bill is going to fight back.

他要摆脱这个协议。另一件重要的事是他想和精力充沛的人共事。那时我能立刻识别出和我一样精力过剩的人。史蒂夫·鲍尔默在这方面比我认识的任何人都突出。所以他希望身边都是高能量、高强度的人。

He's going to get himself out of this deal. Another thing that was important to him, he wanted to be around other high energy intense people. By then, I could instantly recognize other people who admitted my kind of excess energy. Steve Ballmer had it beyond anyone that I'd ever known. So he wants to be around high energy, intense people.

再说说他的工作方式。他关注所有细节，重点是微软和那些被忽视的事情：差旅费、员工监督、客户跟进和合同谈判。我抱怨他们居然还没办公司信用卡。

Again, another way he works. He pays attention to everything. The focus was Microsoft and all the things that were falling through the cracks. Travel expenses, employee oversight, customer follow-up, and contract negotiations. I groused that they still hadn't lined up a company credit card.

今天看来这根本不成问题。他们直接去ramp.com就行。然后话题又回到他正在写的这封信上。我写道，自从我离开后我们已经花费了14,000美元，不考虑现金流或处理好内存版税问题只会让我们走向破产。尽管你们总在谈论勤奋工作和加班加点，但显然你们既没有共同讨论过微软的事，甚至个人也未曾深思过，至少远远不够。

Today, that would be a no brainer. They just go to ramp.com. Then it goes back to this letter he's writing them. I wrote, we spent $14,000 since I left and not thinking about cash flow or taking care of the memory royalty is a way to send us down the tube. For all the talk about hard work and long hours, it's clear that you guys haven't talked about Microsoft together or even thought about it individually, at least not nearly enough.

至于兑现我们最后的承诺，他们根本没有做到。而当他评论这封信和与共事者的谈话时，他是这么说的：我一直是个严厉的监工，总在无休止地担心失去领先优势，害怕稍有不慎就会万劫不复。我们见证过C Cubed的兴衰——还记得他当年半夜溜出去乘公交，就为了去捣鼓电脑吗？

As far as putting out our last measure, the commitment just isn't being met. And when he's commenting on this letter and these talks he's having with the people he's working with, this is what he says. I've always been the taskmaster, the one who incessantly worried about losing our lead and fearing that if we weren't careful, we'd be sunk. We watched C Cubed. Remember when they were he was sneaking out at night, taking a bus, and working on the computer?

那是他参与创业的C Cubed公司。书中说我们眼看着C Cubed从前景光明的初创企业，到十八个月后债主搬走家具的惨状；同时我们也目睹了MITTS公司日渐严重的困境，他们虽占据技术优势却因管理松散难以维系。最让我惊讶的是，书中大量篇幅都在描述他当年的忧心忡忡。史蒂夫·乔布斯说过，我们这个行业的胜利就是生存。比尔·盖茨的种种行为显然深谙此道。

That was a startup he was working It was C Cubed. Says we watched C Cubed go from a promising startup to having creditors drag the furniture away eighteen months later, and we were witnessing the growing trouble at MITTS, which had the lead but seemed to lack the management rigor to maintain it. This is it is very interesting to me how much of the book is talking about how worried he was. Steve Jobs said that victory in our industry is spelled survival. It's very clear from his actions that Bill Gate agreed.

我们清楚开发软件是核心任务。但我担心——这个词又出现了——我担心我们对其他事务的学习速度不够快。他永远在忧虑。这时出现了一家叫Pertech的公司。

We knew the core job of developing software. I worried there's that word again. I worried we weren't learning everything else fast enough. He's always worried. And so there's this company that comes in called Pertech.

Pertech要以600万美元收购MITS。当时看来这对微软简直是灭顶之灾，结果却成了最好的转机——因为收购完成后，所有与微软相关的业务都戛然而止。Pertech停止支付微软版税，许可协议中止，他们拒绝向其他公司出售我们的BASIC语言。

Pertech is going to buy MITS for $6,000,000. And at the time, it looked like one of the worst things that happened to Microsoft winds up being the best because what happens is after they buy, everything Mike Microsoft related stopped completely. So Pertex stops paying Microsoft royalty payments. The licensing deal stopped. They refused to sell our basic to any other company.

他们既不努力推销我们的软件，还阻挠交易，即便越来越多公司在主动寻求合作。这最终引发了诉讼。在《硬盘战争》这本书里有句话——就是我早前提过的那本——那是我最喜欢的对青年比尔·盖茨的描述之一，讲的就是这场官司。因为要知道，埃德·罗伯茨把公司卖给Pertech时警告过他们：比尔·盖茨绝非等闲之辈，不是什么21岁的毛头小子。

They were making no efforts to sell our software, and they were blocking deals even as more and more companies were soliciting us. This is going to cause the lawsuit. Now there's another sentence in the book, Hard Drive, that I told you about earlier. That is one of my favorite descriptions of a young Bill Gates, and it talks about this lawsuit because, you know, Ed Roberts sold his company to Pertech, but he had warned them about Bill Gates is not this average dude. He's not this some, you know, little 21 year old punk.

罗伯茨曾警告Pertech会疲于应付盖茨，但无人理会。Pertech一直说我不讲道理，他们能搞定这家伙，罗伯茨回忆道。这就像罗斯福告诉丘吉尔他能对付斯大林一样可笑。这个我反复强调的特点——他对每个细节都锱铢必较——最初与Pertech的合同正是他亲自谈判的。所以他写道：我越来越清楚地意识到，Pertech既无意支付拖欠的版税，也不打算将88 BASIC授权给其他公司。

Roberts had warned Pertech that it would have its hands full with Gates, but no one listened to him. Pertech kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy, Roberts said. It's a little like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin. And so this idea that I've already repeated a few times that he just pays attention to, like, every little detail, he was the one that had negotiated the contract with them to begin with. And so he says, it became increasingly clear to me that Pertech had no intention of paying us back royalties or sublicensing the 88 basic to any other companies.

但现在我怀疑他们是否真的读过我们的合同。我们并未将软件所有权转让给MITTS，而是授权给他们使用，且合同规定他们有义务尽最大努力将软件再授权给其他公司。这一点极其重要。当一家公司承诺尽最大努力时，就意味着它必须竭尽全力履行合同中的每一项条款。

Yet now I wondered if they had even read our contract. We didn't transfer ownership of the software to MITTS. We licensed it to them, and they were obligated by the contract to make its best efforts to sublicense the software to other companies. This is really, really important. When a company agrees to make its best efforts, it agrees to do everything in its power to make good on whatever is stipulated in contract.

我说过，只要MITTS同意尽最大努力授权我们的源代码，我们就接受独家授权协议。他们的律师却反驳说没人承诺过‘尽最大努力’，他们只接受‘合理努力’的表述，但我拒绝妥协。因此除非合同写明‘尽最大努力’，否则他不会签字。要知道，这距离他们在诉讼中交锋还有好几年时间。

I said we agreed to the exclusive license if MITTS agreed to make best efforts to license our source code. Their lawyers pushed back saying that nobody agreed to best efforts. They would consider instead the term reasonable efforts, but I wouldn't agree. So he wouldn't sign the contract unless the best efforts was in the contract. This is, again, years before they're fighting in a lawsuit.

这个条款至关重要。必须是‘尽最大努力’。这个决定日后将拯救比尔·盖茨于水火之中。他后来表示，我们的核心挑战是要让仲裁员相信：第一，许多公司有意授权我们的产品；第二，Pertech和MITTS在合同义务上本应全力促成这些授权，却从中阻挠。

That was so important. Best efforts, it was. That decision is going to save Bill Gates' ass later. And so he says our central challenge was to convince the arbitrator that number one, many companies wanted to license our product. Number two, Pertech and MITTS was blocking those licenses when they were contractually obligated to make their best efforts at facilitating them.

他们几乎耗尽资金。这再次解释了为何比尔·盖茨对此事如此执着——他需要一年的资金缓冲期。他说我们必须确保账户里有足够资金，即使一整年没有收入也能存活。最终仲裁结果支持了微软。

They almost ran out of money. This is again why Bill Gates is so he was so focused on this. He wanted a one year buffer. He says we're gonna have enough money in our bank account that if no one pays us for a year, we are going to survive. And so the arbitrator sides with Microsoft.

仲裁员终止了我们与MITTS的独家授权协议，明确认定我们拥有源代码所有权。我们立即联系了所有等待该软件的公司，几周内就有五六家客户开始付款。这又回到了保持高度专注的重要性——就像潜艇上的水密舱门，我能彻底隔绝外界干扰。

He terminated our exclusive license with MITTs clarifying definitively that we owned our source code. We immediately called all the companies that have been waiting for the software within weeks. We had money coming in from five or six clients. And then it goes back to the importance of having this hardcore focus. Like one of those watertight hatches on a submarine, I could shut out the rest of the world.

怀着对微软的责任感，我关闭了舱门，锁死了舵轮。没有女友，没有爱好。这是我保持领先地位的唯一方式，我也要求他人同样投入。眼前摆着如此巨大的机遇，为什么不为它每周工作八十小时呢？

Driven by the sense of responsibility I felt for Microsoft, I had closed the hatch door and locked the wheel. No girlfriend, no hobbies. It was the one way I knew to stay ahead, and I expected similar dedication from others. We had this huge opportunity in front of us. Why wouldn't you work eighty hours a week in pursuit of it?

没错，这令人精疲力尽，但也让人热血沸腾。我需要一个全天候24小时的商业伙伴。他逐渐意识到保罗不会成为他的长期搭档。我需要能与我激烈辩论重大决策的同行者。

Yes. It was exhausting, but it was also exhilarating. I needed a twenty four hour a day business partner. He's realizing that Paul is not is not gonna be his long term partner. A peer who would hash out and argue through big decisions with me.

有人会仔细研究那些潦草记录的客户名单，讨论哪些可能付款、哪些不会，并预测我们银行账户的收支状况。史蒂夫·鲍尔默于1980年加入，成为我需要的全天候合作伙伴。书中源代码部分结束于他们从阿尔伯克基迁往西雅图之时。他驾车返回的途中，我认为这是这些传记和自传中反复出现的最重要主题之一。像比尔·盖茨这样取得巨大成功的人，他们当初根本无法预见到自己成功的规模。

Someone who would pour over scribbled lists of which customers might or might not pay and discuss what our bank account would look like as a result. Steve Ballmer joined in 1980 and became the twenty four hour a day partner I needed. And so the book source code ends when they relocate from Albuquerque to Washington. And so he is driving back, and I think this is one of the most important things that, again, reappears over and over again in these biographies, in these autobiographies. When you have extreme success like Bill Gates has had, there's no way that they could have possibly predicted the scale of their success.

他完全不知道前方等待他的是什么。这不仅仅是我个人的回归。微软这家由我和朋友与那群形形色色的员工共同创建的公司，当时已发展成盈利不断增长的企业，从那时起将成为我身份不可分割的一部分。我的道路已经确定，几乎无法想象它将带我走多远。

He has no idea what is ahead of him. It wasn't just me moving back. It was Microsoft, the company that a friend and I had cocreated with that motley group of employees and a growing profitable business and which from that point on would be an integral part of who I was. My path was set. I could hardly imagine how far it would take me.

所以比尔将再写两部自传。第二部将聚焦微软的创立过程——等出版后我肯定会立即阅读并制作专题节目。第三部则会关于他的慈善事业和基金会。现在我要做的是从另外四本关于比尔·盖茨的书中提炼几个核心观点和亮点。

So Bill is going to write two more autobiographies. The second one is gonna be focused on building Microsoft. Obviously, when that comes out, I will read and make an episode on immediately. And the third one will be on his philanthropy and his foundation. So what I'm gonna do now is just pull out a couple other ideas and highlights from four other books that I read on Bill Gates.

第一本书是《硬盘驱动：比尔·盖茨与微软帝国的崛起》，至今仍是我读过关于比尔·盖茨最好的著作。其叙事手法堪称绝妙，正是这种非凡的叙事能力让书中观点深植读者脑海。这是个反复出现的重要主题——人们为故事买单。史蒂夫·乔布斯说过，讲故事的人是世界上最强大的人。

And the first book is hard drive, Bill Gates and the mic making the Microsoft empire, still my favorite book that I've ever read on Bill Gates. The storytelling in that book is absolutely phenomenal, and it's because of the phenomenal storytelling that the ideas are implanted in your brain and you remember them. This is a very important theme that recurs over and over again. The fact that people buy stories. Steve Jobs said that storyteller is the most powerful person in the world.

红杉资本创始人唐·瓦伦丁强调，讲故事的艺术至关重要。大多数来找我们洽谈的创业者都不具备讲故事的能力。学会叙事极其重要，因为资本运作的底层逻辑就是如此。资金流动本质上是故事的函数，这正是我的新合作伙伴Collateral的专长——将复杂概念转化为引人入胜的叙事。

Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia, says the art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come to talk to us cannot tell a story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories, and that is exactly what my new partner, Collateral, does. Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives.

请记住他们的官网collateral.com（这个域名很好记）。Collateral专门为私募股权、私募信贷、房地产、风投、家族办公室、对冲基金、油气公司等各类机构制作专业级营销方案。我有些朋友通过他们的服务，成功募集了数十亿美元资金，创造了数亿美元收益。为什么？因为讲故事是最高效的杠杆之一，值得你大力投入。

I need you to remember their website, which is easy to remember because it's collateral.com. And what collateral does is they craft institutional grade marketing collateral, and they do this for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil and gas companies, all kinds of different businesses. I have friends that have used collateral for their marketing collateral that have raised billions of dollars of capital and have made hundreds of millions of dollars. Why? Because storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage, and you should invest heavily in it.

你可以通过访问collateral.com来实现这一点。现在我要分享《硬盘驱动》的第一个亮点：到1990年时——要知道微软创立于70年代末（76、77年左右），当时他们想打造纯软件公司，但所有客户都认为软件应该免费——微软已成为历史上首家年软件销售额突破10亿美元的公司。书中有句比尔·盖茨的精彩语录...

And you can do that by going to collateral.com. And so the first highlight from hard drive that I wanna talk to about is the fact that by 1990, remember they're they're having these starting Microsoft late seventies, '76, '77, they're like, you know, we wanna make a pure software company, but all our customers think it should be given away for free. There's no such thing at the time. Well, by 1990, Microsoft had become the first software company in history to sell more than a billion dollars worth of software in a single year. There's a great quote from Bill Gates in hard drive.

他说，只要我下定决心，就没有做不到的事。比尔说这话时才11岁。他做任何事都全力以赴，总是远超他人。他做每件事都带着竞争心态，绝非仅仅为了放松。

He says, I can do anything I put my mind to. Bill was 11 when he said this. Everything Bill did, he did to the max. What he did always went well, well beyond everyone else. Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax.

他是个极度自律的人。计算机激发了他内心深处的热情与痴迷。他如饥似渴地吸收所有能接触到的计算机知识，自学编程语言，常常工作到深夜。比尔说：‘真正让我们沉迷计算机的，是那些自由支配的时间。’

He was a very driven individual. The computer triggered a deep passion and an obsession in him. He devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went. It was often after midnight when he finished his work. It was when we got free time that we really got into computers, Bill said.

我的意思是，那时我变得极度狂热，不分昼夜地投入。请注意，他说这些话时描述的是自己13岁时的状态。而且他又用上了最爱的词——‘硬核’。这正是他高中和大学同学对他的评价。

I mean, then I became hardcore. It was day and night. So keep in mind when he's saying that, he's describing a point of his life when he was 13 years old. And, again, he's using that his favorite word, hardcore. This is the way that his friends in high school and college would describe him.

他极其自信，聪明得近乎咄咄逼人。他不谙社交礼仪，是那种清楚自己比所有人都聪明、且永远正确的人。他性格强硬，喜欢正面交锋。

He was sure of himself. He was aggressively, intimidatingly smart. He didn't have any social graces. He was one of those guys who knew he was smarter than everyone else, and he knew he was right all the time. He was hard nosed, confrontational.

他的激情会爆发为原始、不加掩饰的情感。他富有冒险精神，是个敢于冒险的人，一个喜欢玩乐且与之相处很有趣的家伙。他知识渊博、兴趣广泛，能就众多话题侃侃而谈。他也清楚自己想变得富有。

His intensity would boil over into raw, unthrottled emotion. He had a sense of adventure. He was a risk taker, a guy who liked to have fun and who was fun to be with. He had an immense range of knowledge and interest and could talk at length on any number of subjects. He also knew that he wanted to be rich.

尽管比尔高中毕业后还不知道自己将来要做什么，但他似乎确信无论做什么都能赚大钱。他曾多次这样预言自己的未来：'我要在25岁前赚到第一个100万美元。'这话并非夸口，甚至算不上预言。他谈论未来时，仿佛成功早已注定，就像数学证明1加1等于2那样理所当然。

Although Bill did not know what he was gonna do with his life after high school, he seemed confident that whatever he would do would make him a lot of money. He had made such a prediction about his future on several occasions. I'm going to make my first million dollars by the time I'm 25. It was not said as a boast or even a prediction. He talked about the future as if his success was predestined, as if it was a given, as certain as the mathematical proof that one plus one equals two.

比尔·盖茨后来告诉朋友，他去哈佛是想向比自己聪明的人学习，结果失望而归。有本关于比尔的书我做了大量标记想分享给你，其实是保罗·艾伦的自传，但非常有趣。保罗·艾伦和他母亲在这本书的硬盘里，保罗的母亲曾警告儿子要小心比尔·盖茨。他说比尔是个'走在悬崖边上的人'，这就是个例子。

Bill Gates would later tell a friend that he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was and left disappointed. One of the books that I have a bunch of highlights about Bill that I wanna share with you is actually Paul Allen's autobiography, but it's really interesting. Paul Allen and his mom are in this book hard drive, and Paul Allen's mom would warn her son about Bill Gates. He said that he was an edge walker. This is an example of that.

盖茨在课堂上睡着并不令人惊讶。他过着极限生活。连续三天不睡觉对他来说是家常便饭。他的习惯是连续工作三十六小时以上，然后瘫睡十小时，吃个披萨，接着继续工作。如果这意味着要从凌晨三点开始，那也无所谓。

Gates would fall asleep in class was not surprising. He was living on the edge. It was not unusual for him to go as long as three days without sleep. His habit was to do thirty six hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, go get a pizza, and then get back at it. And if that meant that he was starting at 03:00 in the morning, then so be it.

比尔有种偏执的特质。他会专注于某件事并坚持到底。他决心要精通手头的任何工作。比尔决定把精力投向何处时，根本不在乎别人的想法。有趣的是，比尔多么需要保罗·艾伦来推他一把。

Bill had a monomaniacal quality. He would focus on something and really stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy into hell with what anyone else thought. And what's interesting is how much Bill needed Paul Allen to push him over the edge.

我认为如果没有保罗·艾伦，比尔·盖茨不会从哈佛辍学。保罗的兴趣比比尔更广泛些——比尔只想永远做软件、卖软件。最有趣的是，保罗居然引用莎士比亚来说服比尔：现在就是创办自己公司的时机，必须立刻行动否则会错过。保罗对比尔念的莎士比亚名言是：'人间万事有个涨潮时刻，把握潮头便能通向好运。'

I don't think Bill Gates would have dropped out of Harvard without Paul Allen, and Paul Allen was a lot he had, like, a little more broader interest than Bill. Bill just wanted to make software and sell software and do that forever. And so I thought it was really funny is that Paul Allen actually quotes Shakespeare to convince Bill that now is the time to start their own company and that it has to be right now or we're going to miss it. And this is the quote from Shakespeare that Paul Allen read to Bill Gates. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.

'若是错过，人生的航程将困于浅滩与苦海。我们正漂浮在如此丰盈的海洋上，必须趁潮而行，否则将失去所有事业。'盖茨知道艾伦是对的，个人计算机革命即将发生，无论有没有他们参与。虽然我已多次提及，但必须再次强调：很少有人知道比尔对微软资金管理有多谨慎。

Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our venture. Gates knew Alan was right and that the personal computer miracle was going to happen, and it was gonna happen with or without them. Now I already mentioned this a few times, but I think it's, again, really important to reiterate. Not a lot of people know that how cautious Bill Gates was with Microsoft's money.

他要求预留一年缓冲资金。不需要风险投资——微软过去和现在都是印钞机。他财务保守，这正是他经营公司的方式。微软杜绝不必要的开支和奢侈消费，而他从第一天起就怀揣宏大目标。

He wanted a one year buffer. He didn't need to raise venture capital. Microsoft was a money printing machine then and now. He was financially conservative, and that was the way he intended to run his company. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits at Microsoft, and he had giant goals from day one.

自我们相识起，比尔就坚信微软的使命是为所有微型计算机提供软件。这源于他保持精简的偏好——只需要一小群绝顶聪明的人。微软早期员工被称为'微小子'。1976年盖茨和艾伦组建的程序员团队，正是微软初创期成功的关键。

Bill always had the vision from the time that I met him that Microsoft's mission in life was to provide all the software for microcomputers. And it goes back to his preference to keep it lean. You just need a small group of ridiculously smart people. The way they would describe the early employees at Microsoft, they called them microkids. Part of what made Microsoft so successful during the company's infancy was the team of programmers that Gates and Allen began to assemble in the 1976.

这群人后来被称为'微小子'。他们是高智商失眠症患者，渴望加入个人计算机革命。这群痴迷计算机的年轻人不断突破能力和耐力的极限。初读本书时最令我震惊的是微软的精简程度——成立四年时仅有11名员工。

They became known as the micro kids. They were high IQ insomniacs who wanted to join the personal computer crusade. Kids with a passion for computers who would drive themselves to the limits of their ability and endurance. This was one of the most surprising things when I read this book for the first time, just how lean Microsoft was. Four years in, and they had just 11 employees.

我认为他们可能有12个人，因为他们拍了那张著名的微软照片，当时他们正从阿尔伯克基搬到西雅图。照片里只有11个人，但我很确定有一个人错过了拍照。但无论如何，四年后，他们要么有11名员工，要么有12名。这是24岁的比尔·盖茨。那时他们从阿尔伯克基搬到西雅图才一年半。

I think they might 12 because they they take that picture, that famous Microsoft picture when they're moving from Albuquerque to Seattle. And there's only 11 people in the photo, but I'm pretty sure there was one guy that missed the the photo session. But any case, four years in, they either have 11 or 12 employees. And this is Bill Gates at 24. It had only been a year and a half since they'd moved from Albuquerque to Seattle.

当时的微软，这家年销售额700万美元的公司，员工不到40人，即将与国际巨头IBM合作，后者年收入接近300亿美元。比尔将销售置于一切之上。支撑公司的不是比尔的编程能力，而是他不懈的推销本领。多年来，他独自打陌生电话、讨价还价、软硬兼施，说服硬件制造商购买微软的服务和产品。

Now Microsoft, the company with $7,000,000 in annual sales, had fewer than 40 employees, and it was about to go into business with IBM, an international giant with revenues approaching $30,000,000,000 a year. Bill prioritized sales over everything. What sustained the company was not Bill's ability to write programs. Bill sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years, he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers convincing them to buy Microsoft services and products.

他是那种最优秀的销售员。他了解产品，并深信不疑。他以真正信徒般的热情对待每一位客户。他还一心求快。他用来加速的一个策略是：你必须将个人表现置于管理之上。

He was the best kind of salesman there is. He knew the product, and he believed in it. He approached every client with the zealotry of a true believer. He was also hell bent on moving fast. And one way one tactic he used to move fast is you have to prioritize personal performance over management.

这里有个例子。有一天盖茨冲进史密斯的办公室对他吼道：你怎么能花这么多时间处理这份合同？赶紧搞定它。史密斯回忆这次简短但富有教育意义的会议时提到，他的老板比他年轻得多。

Here's an example of that. Gates came into Smith's office one day and shouted at him. How can you possibly take this much time working on this contract? Just get it done. Smith recalled of this short but educational meeting with his much younger boss.

我想我意识到的是，我需要专注，因为金钱和机会就在那里，我需要与客户签订合同。所以我更注重个人表现而非管理。最初，作为一个来自大公司、有学术背景的人，我更多处理管理问题，但几次会议后我明白，个人表现才是关键。另一个令人震惊的数据是：这是比尔·盖茨描述微软仅有30名员工时的情景。

I think what I realized was that I needed to focus, that the money and the opportunities were simply there, and I needed to close contracts with customers. So I focused on personal performance over management. Initially, I was dealing more with management issues as a guy with an academic background coming out of a large company, but it took me a couple of meetings to realize that personal performance was what mattered. This is another mind blowing stat. When we got this is this is Bill Gates describing what Microsoft looked like when they had just 30 employees.

当我们发展到30名员工时，仍然只有我、一个秘书和28名程序员。我负责所有支票、回信、接电话。另一个好主意是：比尔通过依赖他的优势——他的头脑和对工作的热情——克服了他看起来年轻的弱点。他们的一位早期客户描述某天来到办公室的情景。

When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, took the phone calls. Another great idea. Bill overcame his weakness that he looked young by relying on his strength, which was his mind and the passion that he had for his work. And so one of their early customers describes coming to the office one day.

他说：当有人出来带我们去他办公室时，我以为出来的是办公室小弟。结果那是比尔。但我要告诉你，和比尔相处十五分钟后，你就不会再考虑他的年龄或外貌。他是我打过交道的最聪明的人，而且绝对冷酷无情。比尔认为，如果你失去一份5万美元的合同，他视为10万美元的损失，因为微软失去了5万，而竞争对手得到了5万。

He says, when someone came out to take us back to his office, I thought the guy who came out was the office boy. It was Bill. Well, I'll tell you by the time you were with Bill for fifteen minutes, you no longer thought about how old he was or what he looked like. He had the most brilliant mind that I ever dealt with, and he was absolutely ruthless. Bill believed that if you lost a $50,000 contract, he considered it a $100,000 loss because Microsoft lost the 50, and his competitor gained the 50.

盖茨想要将对手彻底清除出竞技场。比尔很早就领悟到，商场的本质就是消灭竞争。这样后期就鲜少有人能与你抗衡。根据博弈论，减少竞争对手能提高胜率，而比尔会毫不留情地研究每个竞争者。如果你和比尔谈论任何软件或硬件公司，他极有可能告诉你该公司的CEO是谁、去年的营收状况、当前研发项目以及产品存在的问题。

Gates wanted to eliminate his opponents from the playing field. Bill learned early on that killing the competition is the name of the game. There just aren't as many people later to take you on. In game theory, you improve the probability you're going to win if you have fewer competitors, and Bill would relentlessly study his competitors. If you talk to Bill about any software company or any hardware company, there's a very high probability that he'll be able to tell you who the CEO is, what their revenues were last year, what they're currently working on, and what the problems are with their products.

他拥有极其渊博的行业知识，并以洞悉行业动态为傲。这种每日追求胜利的野心组合，被比尔·盖茨称为'硬核精神'。正如我之前提到的，微软其实不需要风投。经过长期筹划，比尔最终以百万美元出售了微软5%的股份给TVI（技术风险投资公司）。你能想象吗？

He's very, very knowledgeable, and he prides himself on knowing what's going on in his industry. This combination of ambition and wanting to win every single day is what Bill Gates referred to as being hard core. And so I mentioned earlier that Microsoft did not need VC. In a carefully planned move that had been under discussion for some time, Bill sold 5% of Microsoft for a million dollars. Can you imagine?

微软5%的股权仅售得百万美元，实际上微软并不缺这笔风投资金。盖茨本质上是购买该机构的专业资源。在1997年的访谈中，比尔提到个经典案例——他们IPO募集的资金从未动用，只是存入银行，至今仍与微软其他50亿美元资金静静躺在账户里。

5% of million of Microsoft for a million dollars to TVI, which is technology venture investors. Microsoft did not need the venture capital. Gates was essentially hiring the firm's expertise. There's a great line that I'll share with you later from this interview from 1997 that Bill talks about that the money they raised in the IPO that they never touched. They just put it in the bank, and it's still sitting there with the other $5,000,000,000 he that Microsoft has.

他真正引以为豪的，不仅是打造出财务效率惊人的公司，更是创造了绝对的印钞机。我特别欣赏他对此的表述：虽然明知微软必须上市，但他内心抗拒。上市前一年他说：'我日思夜想的只有销售软件，而非股票'。这自然引出了我想讨论的第三本书——实为《硬盘战争》续作的《超速驱动》。

So he really pride himself on just making not only just a phenomenally financially efficient company and one that just absolutely printed cash. And I absolutely loved what he said about this because he knew that Microsoft had to go public, but he didn't want to. And a year before they go public, he said, all I'm thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock. And so that leads us to the third book I wanna talk to about, which is actually the sequel from hard drive. It's called overdrive.

这算不上杰作，但也不差。或许值得读一次？说实话我自己都不确定，可能连一次都不值得读。

It's not a a great book. It's I mean, it's not bad. I guess, maybe we wanna read it once. Honestly, I don't even know. Maybe not read it once.

或许把《硬盘战争》重读第二遍会是更明智的时间投资。不过书中确有少数观点值得提炼，比如当我们快进到微软发展后期，会发现这种专注与强度依然存在。婚姻、名声和财富都未能减弱吞噬他的炽热竞争欲。本书最精彩的部分再次展现了比尔·盖茨那种冷酷无情的竞争驱动力。

Maybe just reread Hard Drive a second time is probably a better use of your time. But there are just a handful of ideas in here that I do think, like, I wanna pull out and I think is interesting. Because now we've fast forwarded in Microsoft's history, and we see that this focus and intensity is still there. Neither marriage nor fame nor fortune had diminished the white hot competitive fire that consumed him. And so one of my favorite parts of this book is just again, it goes into this ruthless competitive drive that Bill Gates had.

竞争对手菲利普·卡恩如此评价比尔：'盖茨视万物皆应归他所有——无论是创意、市场份额还是合同。他身上找不到丝毫良知或同情心。'

This is how a competitor described Bill. This guy named Philippe Khan. Philippe would later say Gates looks at everything as something that should be his. It could be an idea, market share, or a contract. There is not an ounce of conscientiousness or compassion in him.

公平的概念对他毫无意义。他唯一理解的就是杠杆作用。我再次提到这一点，意味着你的竞争对手很可能不会说你的好话。但重要的是比尔喜欢战斗，你实际上可以从他的个性中学到很多，因为他当时在接受采访，正处于战斗之中。他会描述他所谓的那些心怀不满的竞争对手。

The notion of fairness means nothing to him. The only thing he understands is leverage. And, again, the reason I bring that up, that means your competitors are probably not gonna say nice things about you. But the important thing is Bill liked to fight, and you can actually learn a lot about his personality because he he would he was giving interviews back then, and he's in the middle of the fight. And so he would describe what he called his disgruntled competitors.

这是比尔接受一家主流媒体采访时说的。Lotus之所以失去市场份额，是因为它在抓住两个最大的技术浪潮——Macintosh和Windows上非常迟缓。Borland International因糟糕的合并而分心太多。Philippe Kahn擅长吹萨克斯和航海，但不擅长赚钱。WordPerfect确实是一家单一产品的公司。

This is from an interview that Bill gave to a major publication. Lotus lost ground because it was very late in catching the two biggest technology waves, the Macintosh and Windows. Borland International is too distracted with its bad merger. Philippe Kahn is good at playing the saxophone and sailing, but he's not good at making money. WordPerfect is truly a one product company.

我们最成功的软件是为Macintosh开发的。我们在Mac上的市场份额比其他任何地方都要高得多。苹果公司是怎么帮助我们的？他们会起诉我们吗？也许未来我们的竞争对手会决定变得更强大。

Our most successful software is for the Macintosh. We have a much higher market share on the Mac than anywhere else. And how does Apple help us? Will they sue us in court? In the future, maybe our competitors will decide to become more competent.

强烈的竞争欲望驱使着比尔·盖茨。这源于他那种近乎疯狂的专注力。多年来，盖茨甚至拒绝拥有一台电视，更喜欢把时间花在阅读书籍和杂志上。迈克尔·莫里茨讲过一个很棒的故事，他在采访比尔·盖茨时，盖茨讲述了这个故事。他当时的反应是，哦，天哪。

Deep competitive fires drove Bill Gates. Goes back to this insane level of focus. For many years, Gates had refused to even own a TV, preferring instead to spend his time reading books and magazines. There's a great story told by Michael Moritz where he's interviewing Bill Gates, and he he tells the story. He's like, oh my god.

有人闯入你的车偷走了你的收音机。而比尔却说，不，他们没有。是我自己把它取出来的。比尔还说了一些话，比如，从我家到办公室开车要七分钟。

Somebody broke into your car and and stole your your radio. And Bill's like, no. They didn't. I took that out myself. And Bill says something like, you know, from my house to the office is a seven minute drive.

从办公室到机场大约需要十一分钟车程。然后他计算了一下，在办公室、家和机场之间的车里能有多少时间。他说，你知道，这样每个月可以多出五个小时，与其听音乐，不如用来思考微软的事情。另一个有趣且我认为聪明的想法是，比尔会列一个错误清单，这是一个前十名的清单，他会反复阅读以确保未来不再犯同样的错误。

From the office to the airport, it's like an eleven minute drive. And then he does his math of, like, how much is in the car between the office and his house and the airport. He's like, you know, that's an extra five hours a month where instead of listening to music, I can just be thinking about Microsoft. Another interesting, and I I would say smart idea that that Bill had. He would keep a list of mistakes, and it was a top 10 list, and he'd reread that to make sure they don't make the same mistakes in the future.

我大概有四年没读过《Overdrive》这本书了。但尽管过了这么久，这本书里的这个故事我从未忘记。这是我听过的最疯狂的故事之一。多年来，比尔·盖茨在八十年代中期一直盯着Philippe Kahn，当时Borland的Turbo Pascal（这是Kahn的公司）在市场上碾压微软的竞争产品。盖茨召开了一系列会议，这些会议在微软内部被称为“Borland战争委员会”，期间他和他的团队策划如何击败这位法国人Philippe Kahn。

Now I have not read Overdrive in probably, I don't know, four years, I would guess. But even though it's been that long, this is the one story in the book that I have never forgotten. It's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. For for years, Bill Gates had Philippe Kahn in his sights in the mid nineteen eighties when Borland's Turbo Pascal, this is Kahn's company, was blowing away Microsoft's competing product. Gates held meetings that became known around Microsoft as the Borland War Councils, during which him and his staff plotted how to beat the Frenchman being Philippe Kahn.

据报道，盖茨曾走进这样一场会议，将卡恩的照片摔在桌上并质问：'我怎样才能摆脱这家伙？'他们甚至分发印有'删除菲利普'字样的T恤，但这本书中最疯狂的故事莫过于此。菲利普·卡恩回忆，八十年代末某次行业会议上，他曾发现比尔·盖茨独自坐在角落盯着手中照片。菲利普走近时，盖茨拿着的竟是他的照片——这个硬核又荒诞的故事始终是我最爱的盖茨轶事。

Gates reportedly walked into one such meeting and threw Kahn's picture down on a table and said, how can I get rid of this guy? They would pass out T shirts that read delete Philippe, but this is by far the craziest story in the book. Philippe Kahn recalled that he had once found Bill Gates at an industry conference in the late nineteen eighties sitting alone in a corner looking at a photograph in his hands. Philippe walks up to Bill Gates, and Philippe says, it was a picture of me. That is one of my favorite Bill Gates story because it's just such a hardcore crazy thing to do.

比尔·盖茨对胜利的炽热渴望与对失败的恐惧，不仅驱使他击败竞争对手，更要彻底摧毁他们。接下来我们要谈到保罗·艾伦临终前所著自传《创意人》，书中自然收录了大量关于盖茨的趣闻轶事。

Bill Gates burning desire to win and fear of failure compel him, not only to beat his competitors, but to destroy them. Okay. So that leads us to Paul Allen's autobiography that he wrote shortly before he died. It's called Idea Man. As you can imagine, there's a bunch of interesting stories and anecdotes about Bill Gates in it.

前文提过盖茨的二元生存状态：要么处于神经质般的亢奋中（日饮十几罐健怡可乐），要么彻底耗尽能量——他会工作到精疲力竭，然后蜷缩在办公室地板上十五秒内入睡。有时清晨回来，能看见他伸出办公室门的双脚。盖茨与艾伦截然不同，迈克尔·戴尔自传中有个类似艾伦自传的故事：戴尔曾聘请资深人士担任总裁，结果对方仅坚持了四年。

I mentioned this earlier, the fact that Bill lived in binary states. He was either bursting with nervous energy, drinking a dozen Diet Cokes a day, or he was completely dead to the world. He'd work until drained and then curl up on the floor in his office and be asleep within fifteen seconds. Sometimes I return in the morning and see Bill's feet sticking out of his office doorway. Bill and Paul were very different, and I think there's a story in Michael Dell's autobiography that's similar to the story that's told in Paul Allen's autobiography in the sense that Michael had an older, more experienced person that he hired to be president of Dell, and the guy only lasted four years.

这位总裁说（此时戴尔还处于初创期），四年任期结束时他已腰背受损、胃病缠身、头发掉光，整个人濒临崩溃。

He said by the time and this is the very early history of Dell. By the time, you know, four years was up, he's, like, back hurt. He's hit stomach problems. He was losing all his hair. He was just like dying.

他哀叹'这种折磨真要了我的命'，而戴尔却每天蹦跳着上班——这与盖茨和艾伦的关系如出一辙，盖茨对应戴尔的角色，艾伦则对应那位总裁。

And he's like, I'm this distress is literally killing me. And Michael's like bouncing to the office every day. He's like super excited. It's exactly the same with Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Obviously, Bill playing the role of Dell and Paul Allen playing the role.

记得那人叫李·沃克。书中提到微软高压环境的成因：盖茨对他人如同对自己般严苛。他逐渐成为监工，会在周末巡视停车场核查出勤，除了重读源代码和五本书的笔记，我还观看了前文提及的盖茨纪录片。

I think it's the guy's name was Lee Walker. But he he talks a little about this. Microsoft was a high stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself. He was growing into a taskmaster who would prowl the parking lot on weekends and see who made it in. In addition to rereading the source code and then all my highlights and everything from these other five books, I also watched a documentary on Bill that I mentioned earlier.

该片在网飞播出。早期盖茨会记下微软停车场所有车牌号——正如他所说，他永远觉得不够好，必须不断自我鞭策。

It's on Netflix. And Bill had would go out and he'd memorize the license plates of the cars in the Microsoft parking lot in the early days. That's what he's talking about. And one thing that Bill would do is he never thought it was good enough. You should always be pushing.

正如鲍勃·格林伯格所说，你应该始终保持这种状态——他曾从周一到周四连续工作81小时。当比尔在鲍勃马拉松式工作的尾声联系他时，问道：'明天打算做什么？'鲍勃回答：'计划休息一天。'而比尔反问：'为什么要那样做？'他是真心无法理解。

You should always be So says Bob Greenberg once put in eighty one hours in four days, Monday through Thursday. When Bill touched base towards the end of Bob's marathon, he asked him, what are you working on tomorrow? Bob said, was planning to take the day off. And Bill said, why would you do that? He genuinely couldn't understand it.

他似乎从不需要充电。比尔喜欢通过激烈的一对一讨论来解决问题，他在冲突中如鱼得水，且毫不避讳挑起争端。我们中有些人对他贬低他人、逼迫对方捍卫立场的做法感到不适。若听到不满意的回答，他会摇头讽刺道：'哦，所以这意味着我们会丢掉合同对吧？然后呢？'

He never seemed need to recharge. Bill liked to hash things out in intense one on one discussions. He thrived on conflict, and he wasn't shy about instigating it. A few of us cringed at the way he would demean people and force them to defend their positions. If what he heard displeased him, he'd shake his head and say sarcastically, oh, I suppose that means we'll lose the contract and then what?

如果你没有深入思考自己的立场，或者碰上比尔心情糟糕时，他就会祭出经典羞辱：'这是我他妈听过最蠢的事。'比尔就像自然力量般势不可挡。但当有人据理力争，与他深入探讨最佳方案时，他会很欣赏——他绝不会以权压人结束争论。

And if you hadn't thought through your position or Bill was just in a lousy mood, he'd resort to his classic put down. That is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. Bill came on like a force of nature. Bill liked it when someone pushed back and drilled down with him to get to the best solution. He wouldn't pull rank to end an argument.

他期待你打消他的疑虑，并尊重那些能做到的人。接着我要分享保罗·艾伦对比尔·盖茨的精彩比喻：'我近距离接触过的人里，只有另一个能与他比肩——那种不仅要击败你，若有可能更要彻底碾压你的人。这两人在纯粹竞争性上无人能及。那就是比尔·盖茨和迈克尔·乔丹。'

He wanted you to overcome his skepticism, and he respected those who did. And then I love this comparison of Bill Gates from Paul Allen. I've seen just one other person up close who compared to him, who wanted not only to beat you, but to crush you if he could. Those two stood apart for Raw competitiveness. That was Bill Gates and Michael Jordan.

这又回归到他那种永不停歇的专注力。他了解流行文化的碎片，但软件业务始终占据他思考的第一、第二和第三位。重读本书摘录时我很庆幸，因为我已忘记这段：1979年罗斯·佩罗曾试图以'七位数中段'价格收购微软。而比尔·盖茨的回应是——

And then it goes back to this just relentless focus. He knew bits and pieces of popular culture, but he was thinking about the software business first, second, and third. And then I'm so glad I reread my highlights from this book because I had forgotten this. So Ross Perot tried to buy Microsoft in 1979 for, quote, mid 7 figures. And this is what Bill Gates said.

比尔·盖茨说：'不，我要保持独立。'请注意，当年微软收入仅240万美元。重读此处时，我想起与某位创始人的对话。很多人因我大量阅读而认为我有某种预测能力——但我自认没有。他们常问：'现在哪些年轻创始人会成为传奇？'

Bill Gates said, no. I want to remain independent. Now keep in mind, Microsoft's revenue that year was just $2,400,000. When I reread that, I thought about this conversation I had with this founder. So a lot of people ask me, like, they they think because I've done all this reading, like, I have some kind of, like, predictive ability, which I don't believe I have.

我确实不具备这种预判力，时间会证明一切。但有一位我逐渐了解的创始人，他让我感受到年轻比尔·盖茨的气场——那就是Cognition的创始人斯科特·吴。

Like, what are what are, like, the young founders now that that, you know, are gonna be one of the greats? And I don't believe I have any kind of predictability. You know, time will tell. But there is one person that I've gotten to know that just gives me young Bill Gates vibes, and it's the founder of Cognition. His name is Scott Wu.

科技行业的许多人会知道斯科特是谁，但行业外的人可能不了解。如果你还不认识他，我强烈建议你去了解一下，关注他的职业生涯。他还年轻，才二十多岁，就已经在运营当今最重要的AI公司之一。

And many people in the tech industry will know who Scott is. Many people out out of it will not. And if you're one of the people that don't, I would definitely look into him and just pay attention to his career. He's still young. He's still in his twenties, and he's running one of the most important AI companies today.

我特别喜欢这个关于微软的小趣闻——他们拒绝了几百万美元出售公司的提议。接着保罗谈到了比尔在微软早期最重要交易上的决策，当然大家都知道是与IBM的那笔被反复提及的交易，这里我就不再赘述了。

And so I actually love that little piece of, you know, Microsoft trivia. It's like, nope. We're not selling the company for, you know, a couple million dollars. So then Paul goes into Bill's thinking on their most important deal in the early days of Microsoft, which obviously there's a deal with IBM that's been covered over and over again. So I don't wanna rehash that.

我只想告诉你们他们当时的思考方式，以及比尔在这个时期做出的卓越决策。比尔和我愿意放弃每份拷贝的版税，只要能自由将DOS软件授权给其他制造商。这是我们为Altair BASIC制定的老策略。深陷反垄断诉讼的IBM立即接受了这种非排他性协议。后来他们因'贱卖家当'而备受指责，但当时几乎没人意识到行业变革的速度之快，包括我们在内，没人预见到与IBM的交易最终会让微软成为当时最大的科技公司，也没想到比尔和我将获得超乎想象的财富。

I just do wanna tell you how they think how they thought about it and Bill's really great decisions that he was, making, around this time. Says, Bill and I were willing to forego per copy royalties if we could freely license the DOS software to other manufacturers. This was our old strategy for the Altair basic. Already enmeshed in antitrust litigation, IBM readily bought this nonexclusive arrangement. They'd later be slammed for giving away the store, but few people at the time discerned how quickly the industry was changing, and no one, including us, foresaw that the IBM deal would ultimately make Microsoft the largest tech company of its day or that Bill and I would become wealthy beyond our imagining.

保罗继续写道：微软最大的资产不是我们专门为IBM PC开发的版本，真正的金矿是我们称为MS-DOS的兼容系统——这个产品可以打着我们自己的品牌，在全球范围内反复销售给那些跟随IBM进入16位市场的公司。这个产品是他们从西雅图计算机产品公司购买的。微软与这家公司反复谈判的过程特别有趣，因为他们愿意授权给客户，却想从供应商那里直接购买。

Paul continues, Microsoft's biggest asset wasn't the version that we made specifically for IBM PCs. The real bonanza was the compatible system that we called MS DOS, the product that could be sold over and over again worldwide under our own name to companies that would follow IBM's flying wedge into the 16 bit market. It is a product that they bought from this company called Seattle Computer Products. So Microsoft is going back and forth with Seattle Computer Products on this. And this part is really interesting because they're willing to license to customers, but they wanna buy from suppliers.

我们提出直接买断，但被拒绝了，就像其他客户想直接购买他们的软件时一样。最终我们与西雅图计算机产品公司签署的销售协议，为微软的未来奠定了基础。这是一份完全自主的DOS系统，极具价值的资产。正如我在后来的证词中所说，比尔在这个问题上非常坚持。

We proposed an outright purchase, which they say no to when customers ask to outright purchase their software. And that was a sales agreement that we signed with Seattle Computer Products. That contract laid the foundation for what Microsoft would become. It was a free and clear DOS, a very valuable asset. And as I stated in a deposition sometime later, Bill was very adamant.

这是最关键的部分，也是我为什么要完整朗读这段内容的原因，你们必须记住这一点：比尔坚决主张将合同定为产品买断协议。他认为我们应该完全拥有并控制这个产品。

This is the most important part. This is why I just read this this this entire section to you. This is the part that you you should remember. Bill was very adamant that we should make the contract an agreement of sale. Bill thought we should have complete ownership and control of the product.

他始终认为，要想控制和受益于产品的迭代发展，直接拥有比授权更有利。接着保罗揭示了比尔的用人哲学：比尔认为应该在程序员年轻热情、尚未被其他公司'污染'时就招揽他们。我们想要刚获得学士学位的毕业生，最重要的是——我们要招揽最聪明的人才。

He felt it was always better if you wanted to control and benefit from the evolution of a product to own it as compared to license it. Paul then gives us insight into how Bill hired. Bill thought it was better to get programmers when they were young and enthusiastic before they were ruined by working somewhere else. We wanted freshly minted bachelor degrees. Above all, we were after the brightest lights.

一位优秀的程序员其产出可能是普通程序员的十倍。若是天才，这个比例可能达到五十比一。接着保罗谈到他看待微软的方式与比尔不同。比尔将微软视为自身的一部分，而保罗还有其他兴趣。

A great programmer can out produce an average one by 10 to one. With a genius, the ratio might be 50 to one. And then Paul talks about the different way that he saw Microsoft compared to Bill. Bill saw Microsoft as a part of himself. Paul had other interests.

比尔与微软的认同感如此强烈，以至于他常常分不清公司在哪里结束，而他个人从哪里开始。到了九十年代末期，微软已成为历史上规模最大、利润最丰厚的软件公司，其增长速度与个人电脑行业同步，发展极为迅猛。然而比尔却认为杯子还有八分之七是空的——这也是他与几乎所有教育领域创业者共有的特质。

Bill so utterly identified with Microsoft that he'd get confused about where the company let off and he began. By the late nineteen nineties, Microsoft was the largest and most profitable software company in history, growing at the same rate as the personal computer industry. Very rapid growth. Yet Bill saw the glass as seven eighths empty. Again, another thing that Bill shares with almost all of his education entrepreneurs.

他们从不满足于已有成就，不会躺在功劳簿上睡觉。创造伟大之后，便立即着手再造辉煌。这些人永远不知满足。此外他们都遵循以下原则：比尔对于淘汰低绩效者极为严格。

No resting on laurels. No sleeping on wins, make something great, and then do it again. They are never ever satisfied. And they all also do the following. Bill was rigorous about weeding out underperformers.

好的。最后我想讨论的这本书，我已经反复告诉过你们每个人都该买。它精彩绝伦——可能是《创始人》播客第208期，也可能是第204期。

Okay. So then the last book that I wanna talk to about is a book that I've told you over and over again that everybody should buy. It's incredible. I think it's episode two zero eight of founders. It might be episode two zero four.

这本书名为《与巨人同行》，由两位斯坦福MBA学生于1997年撰写。他们采访了16位科技公司创始人，全书就是经过编辑的访谈实录。令人惊叹的是，接下来你们听到的所有内容都直接来自1997年的比尔·盖茨本人。

It's called in the company of giants. Two Stanford MBA students wrote it back in '97. They interviewed 16 technology company founders, and the book is just transcripts of the interviews edited. It's incredible. So all the words you're about to hear are just Bill Gates in '97.

此时的比尔拥有两万名员工，净资产约200亿美元。他说："其他公司都在做硬件和软件，我们只专注于软件——这就是我们的优势。成立专业软件公司的洞见至关重要，因为像王安电脑、DEC或IBM这些拥有丰富软件技术的公司，却不具备这种远见。"

And at this point, Bill has 20,000 employees and a net worth of around $20,000,000,000. He says everyone else was doing hardware and software. We focused just on software. That was our advantage. The insight to do a dedicated software company was key because other companies like Wang or DEC or IBM who had lots of software expertise didn't have that vision.

他们从未将软件技术视为核心业务。接着他谈到自己早期取得销售成功的关键优势："你必须清楚自己与什么竞争，而不仅仅是与谁竞争。"这句话源自西南航空创始人赫伯·凯莱赫，让我为你稍作背景说明。

They didn't treat their software skill as a key business. And then he talks about one of the main benefits he had and that led to a lot of early success with sales. There's this idea that you should you you have to know what you compete with, not just who. So let me give you a little background here. The the the that maxim came from this guy named Herb Kelleher, who was the founder of Southwest Airlines.

西南航空是历史上最成功的航空公司。它连续四十年保持盈利，最初成立时仅计划在德克萨斯州内运营。赫伯·凯莱赫在我读过的一本关于他的书中讲述了这个精彩故事：他的投资人会跑来建议说，'嘿，你应该提高票价。比如你的竞争对手从奥斯汀飞休斯顿的航班卖80美元。'

Southwest Airlines is the most successful airline in history. It was profitable for forty straight years, and it was originally started as just to be a airline that was only going to operate in the state of Texas. And so Herb Kelleher tells this great story in one of the books I read on him where, you know, he'd have one of his investors come up to me like, hey. You know, you should raise your prices. Like, your competitor is selling a flight from, let's say, Austin to to Houston for $80.

我们只收16美元。当然，我们可以稍微提高点价格。但赫伯坚持己见，他说：'不，你不明白。'

We're charging 16. Certainly, we can bump up the price a little bit. And Herb was at him. He's like, no. You don't understand.

你以为我在和XYZ航空公司竞争？其实不是。我真正的竞争对手是地面交通。你以为知道我们在和谁竞争，而我要告诉你真正的竞争对象。比尔·盖茨早期在销售策略中也提到过类似观点：'如果你们自主开发软件，固定工程预算需要X美元，而微软的价格还不到X的一半。'

You think I'm competing with x y z airline. I'm not competing with them. My real competitor is Ground Transportation. You think you know who we're competing with, and I'm telling you what we're competing with. And so Bill Gates talks about this in the early days of sales approach was to say, if you had to write the software in house, your fixed engineering budget would be x amount of dollars, and Microsoft's price is less than half of x dollars.

我们当时是在与企业内部工程预算竞争，而且从我们这里获得的产品比他们自己开发的更强大。接着他又回到二十年前那个关键洞察：'软件是个非常特殊的行业，开发工作并不那么资本密集。第一年我们就疯狂产生现金流，尽管当时很多客户都破产了。'

We competed against in house engineering budgets, and what you got from us was more powerful than they if they than if they had done it themselves. And then he goes back into that key insight that he made, you know, twenty years previously. Software is a very unusual business. The development work is not that capital intensive. The first year, we generated cash like mad even though we had many customers who went bankrupt.

换句话说，我们有很大的容错空间。'我总是希望银行里有足够资金，即使一整年没有收入也能维持运营。'他至今仍保持这个习惯：'我们上市融资的钱都存在银行里，加上另外50亿美元。'

In other words, we had a wide margin for error. I always wanted to have enough money in the bank so that if nobody paid us for a year, we would be okay. And he was still like that. He says the money we got from going public is in the bank. That along with another $5,000,000,000.

虽然我已经提过这点，但值得再次强调。'我过去每年都会更新一份名为《微软十大失误》的备忘录。我们很多错误都与未能及时进入某些市场有关，但制约因素始终是：我们能招聘多少人手、如何管理所有事务、以及确保每个产品都能兑现交付承诺。我们永远如履薄冰。'我觉得这事我应该反复强调。

And then I mentioned this already once, but I think it's important to repeat. I used to have this memo that I updated every year called the 10 great mistakes of Microsoft. Many of our mistakes relate to the markets we didn't get into as early as we should have, but the constraint was always the number of people we could hire, how to manage everything, and then ensuring everything that we made met all of our delivery commitments. We were always on edge. I think that's something I I should have told you multiple times.

所有书里都隐含这个道理。如果你仔细品味比尔·盖茨的话：'我们永远处于紧张状态。随着公司规模扩大，所有事情都会显得支离破碎，所有项目都感觉要延期，所有成果都显得不够完美。'

It's in all these books. Your Bill Gates would if you actually read between the lines of what he's saying, you know, we're always on edge. As your company scales, everything's gonna feel like it's broken. Everything feels like it's gonna be late. Everything is going to feel like it's not good enough.

他在公司待了二十一年，我想，他依然保持着那种心态。他在采访稍后部分重申了这个观点：嘿，一切总会有些许不适。当时确实是个挑战，因为对我们能力的需求超出了我们所能提供的。比尔眼中所见，杯子总是七分空。

He's twenty years in twenty one years, I think, into his company, he still feels that way. He reiterates this idea that, hey. Everything's gonna be slightly uncomfortable a little later on in the interview. It was a real challenge because the demand for our capabilities exceeded what we could do. Everything Bill sees, the glass is always seven eighths empty.

比尔说，我们从不谈论已取得的成功，总是讨论前方的挑战。永远没有终点线。你永远不会在微软会议上听到有人说'我们赢了'。这种不满足于既有成就的紧迫感，正是他经常强调的。

Bill says, we never talk about the things we've been successful at. We always talk about the challenges ahead. There is no finish line. You will never go into a Microsoft meeting and hear somebody say, we won. And that sense of urgency that no resting on laurels, something he talks about.

再次强调，大型企业要长期保持卓越绝非易事。这成了日常功课。这非常了不起——要知道，即便当时拥有两万名员工和两百亿美元净资产，比尔仍明白这只是开始。听听他1997年说的话：

Again, large companies are never easy to maintain at a high level of excellence. It becomes the daily task. There is a huge this is remarkable because I I I mentioned, you know, even with 20,000 employees and a $20,000,000,000 net worth at this point, Bill knew that it was just the beginning. Listen to what he says here. This is 1997.

就市场潜力而言，眼前还有巨大商机。我们作为软件公司，坚信软件将持续增值。这里存在约550亿美元的机遇。即便如此，比尔·盖茨也未能预见微软二三十年后会发展到何种程度。

There is a huge business out there in terms of getting to the market potential. It's all in front of us. We're a software company, and we think software will continue to be valuable. There's an opportunity to make about $55,000,000,000 out there. And even that, Bill Gates couldn't have predicted what Microsoft's gonna be doing, you know, twenty, thirty years later.

去年营收约2800亿美元。所以他说这里存在约550亿美元的机遇。优秀软件会愈发珍贵。必须坚守核心主业——我们销售的是软件，不是股票。

Last year's revenue was something like $280,000,000,000. So he says there's an opportunity to make about $55,000,000,000 out there. Great software will become more valuable. You must keep the main thing the main thing. We sell software, not stock.

我的工作是最棒的。我比多数人更投入工作。没有什么能让我对其他工作或活动产生兴趣。我与许多半途而废者存在本质区别——他们就是对下一阶段所需条件及角色适应缺乏兴趣。

My job is the best job. I am more committed to my job than most. Nobody is going to get me interested in some other job or activity. There's a big difference between myself and a lot of the people who fade away. They just aren't as interested in what the next stage requires and fitting into the role it requires.

就创业并运营二十一年而言，这种情况并不普遍实在令人惊讶。我特别喜欢他这句话：'我始终拒绝企业家这个标签，因为它暗示你把创业置于软件开发之前。我从没想过先开公司再决定业务方向。'

In terms of starting a company and running it twenty one years later, it's surprising that this is not more common. And I love what he says here. I've always rejected the term entrepreneur because it implies that you're an entrepreneur first and a software creator second. I didn't say, oh, I'll start a company. What will it be?

饼干？面包？软件？不。我是一名软件工程师，我决定组建一个团队。

Cookies? Bread? Software? No. I'm a software engineer, and I decided to gather a team together.

这个团队逐渐壮大，开发了更多软件产品，并竭尽所能推动项目前进。你必须享受每天的工作本身及其卓越之处。后来有人问他，你知道，你在业内以对竞争对手和其他人态度强硬著称。他的回答是，什么叫强硬？发布优质产品算强硬吗？

That team grew over time, built more software products, and did whatever was needed to drive that forward. You've got to enjoy what you do each day for itself and for its excellence. And then one of the questions he was asked was about, you know, you have a very aggressive reputation for your competitors and other people in your industry. And his answer was, what's aggressive? Shipping a good product?

这才叫强硬。降低产品价格让更多人能用上？这算强硬？这些都是好事。我们在这里打造优质产品，接听所有电话，与用户会面，雇佣聪明人。

That's aggressive. Lowing the price of the product so more people can get it? That's aggressive? Those are good things. We're here making good products, taking all the phone calls, meeting with users, hiring smart people.

这就是我们全部的生意。

That's all our business is.